Hallelujah (1929-30)

 

Hallelujah is tough to watch with a modern sensibility because it does occasionally traffic in some pretty offensive stereotypes of African Americans. Historically, it is significant as the first all-black, all-sound musical film, released early in the sound era, and it was named in 2008 to the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.” I’m sure its defenders (if there are any?) would claim that it depicts the standard representations of African Americans of the time, but given what we know of the racist tendencies of the entertainment industry, that doesn’t make it easier to view. You cannot just dismiss what was offensive even at the time of its creation; the film even features a character named Mammy, and that term certainly had pejorative implications even in 1929. The plot concerns Zeke, a poor cotton farmer who gambles away the money that his family has earned on their yearly crop. He’s fallen under the influence of a “loose woman” named Chick who is working with her boyfriend, a hustler called Hot Shot. After they cheat Zeke out of his money, he tries to get it back and one of his brothers is accidentally killed in the fight. Zeke becomes a preacher, renames himself Zekiel, and tries to convert Chick to Christianity. The sequence where Zeke baptizes multiple people, including Chick, is really quite beautifully shot. However, he really cannot resist Chick and she cannot resist her former lover. Soon after he leaves his religion to be with her, she renews her relationship with Hot Shot. As Zeke, actor Daniel L. Haynes exhibits a fine baritone voice. The real star of the movie, though, is Nina Mae McKinney as Chick. She is a supremely talented actress, a great singer, and a fantastic dancer. It’s a shame that she didn’t have a bigger, more successful career. Much of the acting is somewhat amateurish, but the dialogue doesn’t really help the actors. What does impress a viewer is the integration of music into the film’s narrative. Hallelujah features lots of singing and music, much of it diegetic. The music is an interesting mix of religious and secular music, and it certainly contributes to the overall impact of the film. Here’s an interesting bit of awards trivia: the film’s director, King Vidor, was one of two directors being nominated for the second time in Academy Award history; the other was eventual winner Lewis Milestone (for All Quiet on the Western Front), who had won for his direction of the comedy film Two Arabian Knights in the Oscars’ first year.

Oscar Nomination: Best Director (King Vidor)

Inherit the Wind (1960)

 

Inherit the Wind fictionalizes the famed “Scopes Monkey Trial” of 1925, but it manages to follow some of the broader outlines of what actually happened. A schoolteacher, played by Dick York (before he became the first Darren on Bewitched), plays the Scopes figure, Bertram Cates, who dares to broach the subject of Darwin’s theory of evolution to his students and is subsequently arrested. Instead of famed attorneys Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan, the movie features Spencer Tracy’s Henry Drummond and Fredric March’s Matthew Harrison Brady. Providing some acidic cynicism is Gene Kelly as E.K. Hornbeck, standing in here for noted journalist H.L. Mencken. The film is adapted from the 1955 play of the same name, and both the playwrights and screenwriters have done really very little to disguise the connections between the fictional and historical counterparts. The trial is even referred to as the “Hillsboro Monkey Trial.” An interesting addition to the historical account is the romance between Cates and a fellow schoolteacher, Rachel Brown (a solid Donna Anderson), the daughter of the town’s preacher, Rev. Jeremiah Brown (Claude Akins, surprising in his fire-and-brimstone glory). Most of the more interesting events in the film take place in a very hot courtroom; that setting doesn’t help the movie escape its stage-bound origins. Tracy’s Drummond and March’s Brady fight each other and try to outshine each other in the courtroom. March has the flashier role, and Brady has the full support of almost everyone in the small town of Hillsboro. They even give him a huge parade and rally when he arrives in town. However, not everyone, it turns out, is against Cates, and some of them even realize how much of an embarrassment to the town this trial and all its publicity truly is. March can, by turns, be bullying, aggressive, and boastful in the courtroom; Brady is always performing for the crowd, it seems. March is too prone to mannerisms and tics that can be distracting, especially the way he moves his mouth at times, and his character emerges as a tragic, almost pathetic figure by the film’s end. By comparison, Tracy’s performance is much more low key. He’s in his funny, sarcastic mode here, and he finds humor even when he’s frustrated because it’s clear he’s going to be on the losing side from the beginning of the trial. The two lawyers have been friends for a long time and have faced each other in court many times, apparently, but their relationship has changed over time as each has taken a different path in life. Caught in the middle is Brady’s wife Sarah, nicely played by Florence Eldridge, March’s real-life spouse. Eldridge’s Sarah gets one good scene defending her husband and his life and work, and many other supporting cast members have opportunities to shine, including Harry Morgan as the judge and Kelly playing very much against type. The film doesn’t really care much for York’s defendant, honestly, and by the time Drummond calls Brady to the stand to testify as an expert witness on the Bible and its teachings, you know this is not really an examination of the impact of evolution. To be fair, Inherit the Wind is not truly meant as a history lesson even though too many people tend to take such movies as being completely factual. This film version is a fictional account, after all, and it isn’t even really about the supposed conflict between the theory of evolution and Christian belief systems or perhaps between education and faith on a much broader scale. Instead, it seems to warn against narrow-mindedness and the persecution of those who hold different ideas. It’s a pretty stern, clear warning about the dangers of fanaticism and groupthink. (The town is, for the most part, a Greek chorus of ignorance.) Sadly, we seem to be as much in need of this lesson today as they were when the play was written in the 1950s or when the film was released in the 1960s.

Oscar Nominations: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Spencer Tracy), Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium, Best Black-and-White Cinematography, and Best Film Editing

The Private Life of Helen of Troy (1927-28)

 

Only about thirty minutes of The Private Life of Helen of Troy exist in the British Film Institute archive, perhaps just one third of its total running time. Adapted from a novel by John Erskine, the film version takes on the famed mythological figures of the Trojan War. IMDB details the plot: “Queen Helen of Troy, in response to her husband Menelaus’ lack of interest in her, elopes with Paris to Sparta. Menelaus, egged on by his henchman, starts a war with Paris, finally effecting the return of Helen. The time-honored custom demands that he have the pleasure of killing her, but her seductive loveliness restrains him.” It seems like the film covers much of what we already know from Homer’s and Virgil’s accounts. The cast includes Maria Corda as Helen of Troy, Lewis Stone as Menelaus, and Ricardo Cortez as Paris. The category for which it was nominated, Best Title Writing, existed only for the first year of the Academy Awards. Sound films were so ubiquitous by the second ceremony that the category was deemed no longer necessary. Title writing is a lost art, of course, but giving viewers a sufficient amount of interesting and useful information on a film’s intertitles made a huge difference. The recipient of the nomination, Gerald Duffy, was the first person to be nominated posthumously for an Oscar. He had died almost eleven months before the first ceremony.

Oscar Nomination: Best Title Writing

The Dove (1927-28)

  

It might be best to describe The Dove as a partially lost film. Four of the film’s nine reels are in the Library of Congress, and they are not even consecutive reels. The film is based upon a play by Willard Mack and stars Norma Talmadge, Noah Beery, and Gilbert Roland, all of them major performers of the silent film era. IMDB summarizes the plot very tersely: “A despot falls for a dancing girl. After she rejects him, he has her other beau framed for murder.” So many of the plots of these lost films sound like they are very melodramatic, don’t they? It was one of the fashions of the times, I suppose. William Cameron Menzies won the first Oscar for Best Interior Decoration, later known as Art Direction and now known as Production Design, for The Dove and for Tempest. He would be nominated again in the same category the following year and would later receive a special Oscar for his use of color in Gone with the Wind.

Oscar Win: Best Interior Decoration

The Magic Flame (1927-28)

Two of the three films for which George Barnes was nominated for Best Cinematography in the first year of the Academy Awards are considered lost. In addition to The Magic Flame, he was also nominated for The Devil Dancer (also a lost film) and Sadie Thompson (most of which still survives). IMDB describes the plot of The Magic Flame in terms that are vague but quite intriguing: “A love triangle involving two members of a travelling circus and an aristocrat has serious consequences for all three individuals.” The three points of that love triangle are played by some big names in early films: Ronald Colman and Vilma Banky. Colman plays both Tito the Clown and the Count, both of whom are in love with Banky’s trapeze artist Bianca. Colman would later win an Oscar for A Double Life and have a long successful career after the transition to sound films. Banky had costarred with Colman in several films and twice with Rudolph Valentino, but she did not make the transition to talkies. Only eight of her twenty-four films are believed to have survived, and another three may exist in fragments, including The Magic Flame. However, it may actually be completely lost at this point. A few reels of the film may survive at either the Museum of Modern Art or the International Museum of Photography and Film at the George Eastman House, but there’s no evidence of a complete version. In fact, there’s even a dispute over whether several reels are available at the George Eastman House. Given the status of many films from this era, it’s quite likely that The Magic Flame is another lost silent film.

Oscar Nomination: Best Cinematography 

Sorrell and Son (1927-28)

 

An almost complete copy of Sorrell and Son and a trailer for the film are now preserved in the Academy Film Archive. However, unless the Academy makes the film more readily accessible, it will remain another rarely seen film from the first year of the awards. The plot, according to IMDB, is based upon the novel of the same name by Warwick Deeping: “Stephen Sorrell, a decorated war hero, raises his son Kit alone after Kit’s mother deserts husband and child in the boy’s infancy. Sorrell loses a promising job offer and is forced to take work as a menial. Both his dignity and his health are damaged as he suffers under the exhausting labor and harsh treatment he receives as a hotel porter. But Sorrell thrives in the knowledge that his son will benefit from his labors. Sorrell has allowed the boy to believe his mother dead, but when the mother shows up, wanting to re-enter the young man’s life, Sorrell must make hard decisions.” That sounds like quite the soap opera. The cast is impressive: H.B. Warner plays Stephen Sorrell, Anna Q. Nilsson plays Dora Sorrell, and Kit is played by Mickey McBan as a child and Nils Asther as an adult. The film’s sole nomination is for a category that existed only during the first year of the awards, Best Directing of a Dramatic Picture. After the first year, there would only be one category for directing, and the Academy would no longer acknowledge that filming different genres can take different sets of skills.

Oscar Nomination: Best Directing of a Dramatic Picture (Herbert Brenon)

The Devil Dancer (1927-28)

 

The Devil Dancer is presumed to be a lost film, one of many from the silent era that we are no longer able to enjoy. According to IMBD, the film’s plot goes as follows: “An English explorer disturbed by the practices of an isolated tribe attempts to rescue a native girl he has become fascinated with.” It sounds like some rather colonial attitudes being represented here, but the film was recognized by the Oscars for its cinematography, not its writing. In fact, its photographer, George Barnes, accounted for 75 percent of the films nominated that first year for Best Cinematography: The Devil Dancer, Sadie Thompson, and Tempest. Barnes would receive a total of eight Academy Award nominations in his career, winning for 1940’s Rebecca. Of course, he lost in the first year of the Oscars to the cinematographers of Sunrise, certainly one of the most beautifully filmed silent movies. The Devil Dancer stars Gilda Gray as the title character (also known as Takla), Clive Brook as Stephen Athelstan, and Anna May Wong as Sada. There’s also a character known as “The White Woman,” played by Barbara Tennant, so that doesn’t bode well for the likelihood of a non-colonial attitude toward the non-white characters (or to women either if they’re only known by one trait or characteristic). Gray apparently was best known for popularizing the dance known as the “shimmy.” Brook would later co-star with Marlene Dietrich and Wong again in Shanghai Express; he also played Sherlock Holmes three times after making a successful transition from silents to talkies. Wong was the first Chinese American movie star and was always underused (or misused) and underappreciated in Hollywood. It would be fascinating to see what Wong (and the rest of the cast) did with what sounds like a less-than-promising premise.

Oscar Nomination: Best Cinematography