Too much of everything

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

No need to recap the plot or echo consensus points.Thanks to the movie, I got to memorize Lancaster's beaming rows of perfect teeth, all 500 of them. He does chew up the scenery, but I guess it's excusable since Gantry's supposed to be a natural showman. The movie was cutting edge 1960. Taking on revivalists was never big in the Hollywood playbook. But that's what both Lewis's novel and the movie adaptation do. Needless to say, the film was controversial when first released, many theatres refusing to show it, even one in my home town if I recall correctly. Lancaster's Gantry is pretty clearly a natural performer drawn to any kind of stage where he can command and feed his ego. Money seems secondary to that overriding desire as does the Lord. Importantly, Gantry's also an entrepreneur, working out business arrangements with others, church pastors included. Needless to say, it's not a pretty picture of revivalist tent shows or of some church pastors.On the other hand, Sister Sharon (Simmons) appears sincere in her divine mission, appearing on stage like an angel. Her role crucially provides some compensation to revivalism and its believers. The trouble is the good Sister is overwhelmed by Gantry's personality and incorporates him into the show despite his questionable motives. Thus she's conflicted between the demands of mind and body, a not uncommon human conflict that most any audience can grasp. Meantime, looking on cynically is newsman Lefferts (Kennedy) who in today's terms appears something of a secular humanist. Thus, he's sympathetic to the needy people seeking solutions even in the revivalist brand. Note how the supplicants are almost uniformly elderly and needy looking, a good realistic touch. Though the movie exposes much that's false with popular religion, the purity of the divine message is left to shine through like the untouched cross standing above the burning tabernacle. It's a symbol loaded with meaning, and no doubt helped get the movie sold to reluctant distributors. Overall, the movie remains an interesting mix of personalities and character, still relevant even 60- years later. Kudos to Lancaster and Brooks for taking on controversy at a time when movies generally avoided such.

Richard Brooks directed Burt Lancaster in this vibrant and cynical story of Elmer Gantry, a glib, hard-living traveling salesman who latches onto a true-believing, fire & brimstone preaching woman named "Sister" Sharon Falconer(Jean Simmons), who has a traveling revivalist church that Gantry, who has a rudimentary knowledge of the bible, and a way with the people, quickly makes his own(with Sharon's approval of course) At first, things go well, but before too long Gantry's past catches up with him when a former love of dubious character(played well by Shirley Jones) pays him a visit, and he is caught in the act of giving money, which threatens the ministry and sets events spiraling out-of-control to the fiery climax.Powerful, supremely well-acted film shows the dark side of a charismatic personality, and those gullible enough to follow them. Not really an attack on religion, since the same rule could be applied to politics, both then and now...

I came into this expecting it to be an exposé of the tent revival movement, and it is that, but I was left with many questions that I have had about the revival phenomenon since I was a young man. More out of curiosity than anything else I attended many such revivals in Oklahoma in the late 1950s. I imagine that there has not been a better time and place to experience these events in their most authentic form, and I came away from them in the same frame of mind that I came away from this movie, wondering just how much of a con job they are. And wondering what the people involved really believe. Burt Lancaster gives a remarkable performance as Gantry in this adaptation of the Sinclair Lewis novel. At the beginning of the movie Gantry is a salesman who is not selling much. Then he sees an opportunity to attach himself to the itinerant evangelist Sister Sharon Falconer. He rises in the ranks due to his zealous sermonizing. By the end of the movie he has changed, even declining the advances of an old flame who commented that he had once "rammed the fear of God into me." I was left to speculate about whether Gantry had truly reformed or whether he had bought into his own malarkey. Just when it seemed that he had become a man of god, he closes with the enigmatic quote from the Bible:When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.Was he saying that he recognized his past behavior as fraudulent, or was he saying that he could now see a way to a more honest ministry?I found Jean Simmons to be miss-cast. She did not project the charisma and strength that I think would be necessary in her position. In the one healing scene she seemed particularly weak. If you want to see some real industrial strength healing in action, catch Oral Roberts in his prime on YouTube.Arthur Kennedy plays news reporter Jim Lefferts. He is probably a stand-in for Sinclair Lewis, being highly skeptical of the whole business. The exchanges between Gantry and Lefferts are at the core of the story. Gantry is such a slippery character that even the cynical Lefferts can't get beyond puzzling over just what sort of man he is.The revival performances I witnesses had it down pat in terms of how to put on a show. There was some warm-up music, maybe something like "Softly and Tenderly, Jesus Is Calling." After a few of the old time hymns the evangelist would come on, starting out slowly and building to a climax, then more aggressive music presented in a rock and roll style. In fact in attending rock concerts later in life I saw a great similarity in the arc of the presentations--the idea is to whip the audience into a frenzy as things go along. Of course in the revival setting, after the audience had been primed they were asked to come forward for conversion, healing, the laying on of hands, or whatever. I have to say that, even as an atheist, it was hard not to be taken in by the spirit of the thing, and I did not get that emotional experience from this movie.

Burt Lancaster's Oscar Winning performance in the title role was well-worth the accolades. He really shines as a tarnished, immoral salesman who spends Christmas at a bar and leaves with one of the ladies during the Great Depression in the heartland. As the film progresses, we learned of Elmer Gantry's past especially his own previous desire to be a minister/preacher. Elmer Gantry is as lost as those who followed in the tent revivals that swept the country during hard times. He manipulates his way into Sister Sharon Falconer (played brilliantly by the late Jean Simmons who should have won an Oscar for her performance in this role). The film is beautifully visual and as Elmer Gantry's past comes haunting again to tarnish the tent revival and watch Gantry and Sister Sharon fall again. Shirley Jones won an Oscar for best supporting actress in her role as the woman who can bring Gantry down. I think she does a brilliant job but I wished that she had more speaking moments. Still the supporting cast is brilliant as well. It's a first rate film!