Hallelujah I'm a Bum! (Lewis Milestone, 1933)

[djali999]

Discovered this utterly charming cinematic oddity earlier this year, purchased the DVD recently and rewatched it - what a strange, wonderful and energetic film! Al Jolson was rarely to interesting on film as he is here, the film has some really esoteric direction and editing, very strange rhyming dialouge segments in place of traditional song numbers, Frank Morgan and Harry Langdon in supporting roles, and the whole thing is somehow connected to Ben Hecht.

Anyway there's very little about this film I've been able to find online or in print, and was wondering what our forum members had to say about it, if anything.

[domino harvey]

It's on Rosenbaum's list of 10 Underappreciated Musicals on the Beaver

[David Ehrenstein]

It's a wonderful movie and a revelation for anyone who knows Jolson only as a bombastic showboat. He's incredibly subtle and touching here, leading to the climactic "You Are Too Beautiful" -- one of Rodgers and Hart's greatest songs.

In the scene where Jolson goes to try and get a job in a bank you can actually spot Larry Hart.

The great Frank Morgan is marvelous as the Mayor. And you'll win an easy 5000 "Gay Jeopardy" bonus points for knowledge of the scene where he bleats "There's no place like home!"

[PhilipS]

In the scene where Jolson goes to try and get a job in a bank you can actually spot Larry Hart.

The opening dedication scene has Richard Rodgers as one of the photographers.

[ltfontaine]

It's true that the film is often described as an "oddity," but I wish there were more movies that were odd like this one. As David and djali say, the cast is wonderful, especially Jolson and Morgan, who virtually reprises his role two years later in The Good Fairy. Also immensely charming is unusung Edgar Connor, as sidekick Acorn, the nature of whose relationship to Jolson's Bumper is winsome and funny, not to mention potentially provocative on several levels, especially in 1933. It would be interesting to know how this film played in the South at time of release.

There are some bravura set pieces, most notably a sequence in which a gang of bums rush through Central Park to confront Bumper on a point of order, running at the camera through a series of staccato cuts that can leave you woozy, and culminating in a deftly directed comic crowd scene worthy of Renoir. Come to think of it, this would make a great double-feature with Boudu!

The tone of the whole thing is so humane and sweet-tempered, and the witty musical numbers are most memorable. I often get stuck in my head the song traded between Bumper and Acorn as they walk back from Florida to New York--"Bumper, Bumper, how far is we?" This also has to be counted as one of the great films about New York City, re-imagined as a burg brimming with poetry and the milk of human kindness.

The great Frank Morgan is marvelous as the Mayor. And you'll win an easy 5000 "Gay Jeopardy" bonus points for knowledge of the scene where he bleats "There's no place like home!"

It's a startling, disorienting moment, coming six years before The Wizard of Oz, but delivered by Morgan in a reading that sounds like an in-joke before the fact.

The opening dedication scene has Richard Rodgers as one of the photographers.

The dedication scene actually occurs midway through the movie. The opening scene depicts duck hunting in Florida. And isn't Lorenz Hart in there somewhere?

[PhilipS]

The opening dedication scene has Richard Rodgers as one of the photographers.

The dedication scene actually occurs midway through the movie. The opening scene depicts duck hunting in Florida. And isn't Lorenz Hart in there somewhere?

That was actually meant to read "the opening/dedication scene", I didn't mean the opening scene of the movie. It's actually a cornerstone laying ceremony. You'll also note that my post was in response to someone stating where the Hart appearance was.

Apropos of which the DVD back cover mistakenly says that both Rodgers and Hart play photographers in the cornerstone laying scene. This was possibly a result of this same error being in the entry for this film in Leonard Maltin's movie guide. After watching this film a few years back and recognising the diminutive Hart as the bank teller, I sent an email to Maltin via his website informing him of the error, and it was corrected in the next edition of the book. As I didn't get a response to the email I can't really claim that one was the cause of the other.

[ltfontaine]

It's further worth mentioning that this little wonder can be had on-line for less than a sawbuck.

[hearthesilence]

MoMA is screening a 35mm print of this as part of "Dames, Janes, Dolls, and Canaries: Women Stars of the Pre-Code Era," and there's one more screening on Sunday, February 13 at 4 p.m.

Spoiler

The defining pre-code scene is when an amnesia-stricken Madge Evans strips out of her wet clothes and gives Jolson an eye-full - a silhouette's suggestion of nudity is pretty damn startling when you forget that the Hays Office wouldn't have any real authority for another year.

I saw this years before on television, but it's even more enjoyable projected from a real film print. I'm not the biggest fan of Lewis Milestone's work - I even have mixed feelings about his uneven adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front - but this may be the one film he's made that I like without reservation. I've seen only one other Jolson film, but I've heard critics of his film work say that this is the one Jolson performance that they genuinely like, partly because he reels it in a bit. So this is probably an atypical Jolson performance, which is interesting because I found Morgan's performance to be atypical too - it stands out for showing a sharp and urbane side to him that I hadn't seen before. (I'm sure he must've displayed those qualities before. I'm guessing the bumbling demeanor he's best known for is a persona he developed to fit his advancing age.)

I'm also recommending the screening because the DVD is really lackluster. The 35mm print looks fine and it's in great shape, but to be clear it's not going to blow your socks off. Unless the OCN is sitting in a vault somewhere in pristine condition, I doubt the materials actually exist to make something better-looking. However, when I popped in MGM's old DVD later on, I was surprised how many more nicks and scratches were present. More egregious was how soft certain parts looked, and not from de-graining. It's all the more disappointing that these included some of the film's best moments like the tracking shot in the bank and the film's best number "You Are Too Beautiful" - the latter is really soft on the DVD and you can kind of see why when the two stop dancing and walk to the window sill. At that moment, there's a tiny jump when the shot cuts to a different source. At that point, everything comes into better focus. It's as if the main part of that scene was lost or damaged and they replaced it with a poor dupe that looked like mush. Such a shame because Jolson gives a beautiful, tender performance - one of the most surprising things about this film is how moving it turned out to be...

Spoiler

...especially at the end when Jolson silently witnesses the love of his life completely evaporate before his eyes, and that song really helps build the mood that leads up to that sad climax.