In his first sound film, King Vidor employed an all-black cast--none of whom had ever acted in motion pictures before--and created a visually stunning “symphony” of a Tennessee family. The magnificent scenes of the river baptism and the “shouting” testify to the fact that Vidor understood the new medium of sound to mean far more than words. At a time when synchronized sound required stationary microphones and virtually immobile camera equipment, Vidor managed to retain the cinematic fluidity of a silent film by painstakingly dubbing in most of the sound after the shooting was completed. Hallelujah is a document of a bygone era, but one that conveys a strangely immediate sense of life.
Though the film was long suppressed as a racist portrait of black culture in the rural South, Vidor's sincerity and affection for his subject are self-evident. At most, he can be accused of paternalism--in 1929, a marked contrast to other directors to whom black faces meant sight gags and instant laughter.