Editing King Vidor (section)

==== ''Hallelujah'' (1929) ====
[[File:Nina McKinney Louise.jpg|thumb|Nina Mae McKinney as Chick in ''Hallelujah'']] 
Vidor's first sound film ''[[Hallelujah (film)|Hallelujah]]'' (1929) combines a dramatic rural tragedy with a documentary-like depiction of black agrarian community of sharecroppers in the South. [[Daniel L. Haynes]] as Zeke, [[Nina Mae McKinney]] as Chick and [[William Fontaine]] as Hot Shot developed a love-triangle that leads to a revenge murder. A quasi-musical, Vidor's innovative integration of sound into the scenes, including jazz and gospel adds immensely to the cinematic effect.<ref>Reinhardt, 2020: Accordingly, music and dance play an outstanding role and add enormously to the work.<br />Durgnat and Simmons, 1988: p. 97: "...both is and isn't a musical..."</ref>

Vidor, a third-generation Texan, encountered black workers employed at his father's sawmills when he was a child, and there he became familiar with their [[Spiritual (music)|spirituals]]. As an adult, he was not immune to the racial prejudices common among whites in the South of the 1920s. His paternalistic claim to know the character of the "real negro" is reflected in his portrayal of some rural black characters as "childishly simple, lecherously promiscuous, fanatically superstitious, and shiftless". Vidor, nonetheless, avoids reducing his characters to [[Uncle Tom]] stereotypes and his treatment bears no resemblance to the overt racism in [[D. W. Griffith]]'s ''[[The Birth of a Nation]]'' (1915).<ref>Baxter 1972 p. 152: "real negro"<br />Silver, 2010:  "Certainly, Vidor could never be accused of the overt racial venom exhibited by Griffith in ''The Birth of a Nation''."</ref>

The black sharecroppers resemble more the poor white agrarian entrepreneurs Vidor praised in his 1934 ''[[Our Daily Bread (1934 film)|Our Daily Bread]]'', emphasizing the class, rather than race, of his subjects. The film emerges as a human tragedy in which elemental forces of sexual desire and revenge contrast with family affection and community solidarity and redemption.<ref>Durgnat and Simmons, 1988: p. 97–98: "The cotton-picking black folk...don't carry [[Uncle Tom]] overtones, for Vidor celebrates the same life in the enterprising white community of Our Daily Bread." And p. 98-99: The film "unleashes forces...[revealing] a moral polarity between family affection versus apparently passionate sexuality..." And p. "...the film affirms the value...of diligence, frugality, hard work...the puritan ethic- mediated through an Afro-ethnicity." <br />Reinhardt, 2020: "But the limitations and prejudices [in the film] are largely class and social ones, not racial. Vidor was all over the place ideologically and politically, notwithstanding his undoubted general sympathy for the poor and marginalized" and "the film's universal message."(emphasis in original)<br />Vidor, an unabashed Texan, carried much of the baggage of a Southern upbringing..." Also "scenes of great tragedy" including the death Zeke's younger brother.</ref>

''Hallelujah'' enjoyed an overwhelmingly positive response in the United States and internationally, praising Vidor's stature as a film artist and as a humane social commentator. Vidor was nominated for Best Director at the Academy Awards of 1929.<ref>Galleghar, 2007: "''Hallelujah'' in 1929, Vidor was internationally celebrated, even in America, as a titanic film artist who was both socially committed and commercial. Had a poll been taken, Vidor might well have been voted the greatest filmmaker in history, the one who had finally realized cinema's poetic potential."</ref><ref>Reinhardt, 2020</ref>