Judge — September 14, 1929 — page 21: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

JUDGE you you ave ever seen a Negro camp meetin have any interest in the finest art of the movie, if you enjoy singing that really sounds human over the movictone, if you: v of genuine entertainment, by all med lujah.” t two hours ns see “Halle I remember a hot summer night outside Memphis. on the quarter-stretch of an old deserted fair-ground ‘Two or three thousand white people with their crying and restless children idled about their cars, listening and watching Holy Roller Negro meeting, while under a flickering kerosene lamp, put to shame by a high-riding full summer moon, the evangelist toiled and shouted at his work. Built like Paul Robeson—his collar undone, stening on his lean face, he jumped and shouted and sang to or three hundred con- verts to a weird piano accompaniment which was sup- ported from time to time by the rhythm of two pair of bones and a small triangle. 1 resorted to homely texts, sweat 1 crowd of tw or an hour or so he resounding exhortations, and then as the moon rose higher he began to draw his audience into rising harmony, perfectly pitched, swelling in time and ¢ .. By two o'clock anx- ious Nordic parents were carrying off drawn-faced children who had fallen under the spell and were jumping, shuffling their feet and wailing a minor chorus to the full-throated savage song of the pil- grims. Text or reason meant Harmony and time in the air to come down with a * are the Lord” he would insert any phrase, any word, so it hit the right beat. When he saw his people relax ing, wearing under the strain, he would give a great shout, pitch his last word in key, and as though by a pre-arranged signal they would leap to their feet and shout a hymn in perfect and inimitable harmony Whether you enjoy the simple story, bes even if you object to the Uncle Tom d arried on in the Negro home dramatized in “ 3 hs must know that King Vidor has im. intact to the serecn the nothing to the his handmaidens. selist Leaping mine saith eva were you aged to bring inextricable music, the mix ture of comedy and tragedy that is the spirit of the southern would never have believed that any movie dircetor could recreate the atmosphere of that Memphis camp mecting. Vidor, a Texan, managed it. He has ma doit with at least a thousand extras, with a leading man who is at least ten percent better than Hollywood Nordic you care to name, and some the most beautiful camera work that has ever appeared in a movie. Most of the s servers of Broadway com- pared “Halleluj “Porgy,” the Hent Negro play of two seasons ago, and dismissed a great part of “Hallelujah” as typical Hollywood hokum I object strenuously to this. The story is simply a means to an end. The movie is really an operetta. It is no more just to slight it because a Negro pl: happened to appear two years ago than it would to say that “The Entrance of the Little Fauns” was cheap music beeause the Uncle Remus. stories got their point over better. tion, every motif, is done to music. dialogue. If Vidor had even used the it still would not be fair to condemn He has portrayed the simple longing, the hates and loves of the plantation negro by lights and shadows, b other director int could have done it so well. By his keen ing of his subject, by his work in “The by “The Crowd,” he has shown himself American white hope of Hollywood. that in a workshop run by men nothing of movie technique, or, has very ex There plot of his movie. “Porgy song. as the It is amazing who cither know as is more often the © not for it unless it spells box office, one man should consistently set for himself higher and higher standards. It is consistent that Broadway should slight “ leluj One night it goes to see “The Hollywood Revue” produced by the same comy ’. allows itself to be imposed upon by tawdry vaudeville tricks and squirted with orange perfume, and pronounces it f or even good. The next night it sees “Hallelujah and because it saw one play of Negro life with a stage (Continued on page 27 only Hal- The Movie Guide “MIdi"—The second-best talkie to “* Pusver-in-the-Face”—In th ““shysterious Dr. Fu Mancha" mystery “Piccaditt ulldeg Drummond” —Thy The Cock-eyed World” —With Vic- tor MeLagien. Bawdy a film “Say It With Sangs"*—Sonny: Hoy and Al Jolson baby-talking to each other