The movie of Sinclair Lewis's muckraking 1927 exposé of hypocrisy on the Christian revival circuit Elmer Gantry was, apparently, still controversial in 1960. Although I don't think that there are revivals in circus tents any more, vast sums of money are still being extracted by moral entrepreneurs who have adopted their appeal to the medium of television. The Bible-thumping preacher Elmer Gantry was pioneering the use of the then-new medium of radio to get out the mixture of (selective) Biblical literalism and railing at immorality and modernity that defines the Christian Right then as now. Aimee Semple MacPherson, the seeming real-life model for Sister Sharon Falconer, was recorded in talking pictures (of which, I've seen bits).

The self-righteous businessmen about whom Sinclair Lewis wrote were enthusiasts for technology and regarded gadgets as proof that God favored (white) Americans who should rule the benighted rest of the world. Obviously, Lewis regarded those leading the benighted mass of twice- and thrice-born Christians of the Midwest as dangerously self-deluded America First-fascists (It Can't Happen Here).

The rascally Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster in his award-winning turn) is, at the start of the movie written and directed by Richard Brooks (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Professionals, etc.) a not very successful traveling salesman much given to smoking tobacco, drinking alcohol, womanizing, and fast-talking customers. He does not lack familiarity with the old-time religion of American puritanism and feels that the exalted Sister Sharon Falconer is working a scam that could profit him.

With a bit of information gleaned from the choir leader (pop singer Patti Page) and assistance of a Zenith newspaper reporter Jim Lefferts (Arthur Kennedy), Gantry ingratiates himself to Sister Sharon on a night train. Her manager (Dean Jagger) finds Gantry vulgar and digs up dirt on his background, but Gantry's vulgar tactics work and complement Sharon's more ethereal appeal.

Both Elmer and Sharon want to get out of the sticks and carry the message of damnation/salvation to the metropolis of Zenith. Sharon want to have a tabernacle there, instead of inspiring people to go to local churches in the rural communities she has been visiting. The Falconer/Gantry ministry in Zenith overcomes considerable obstacles of hostility, an exposé by Jim Lefferts of self-anointed instruments of divine grace raking in tax-free contributions for which no accounting of spending is made, an entrapment to produce compromising photographs of Elmer with a prostitute (Shirley Jones, with whom he had ancient history), a ballyhooed exoneration, an omen (a shooting star) that Sister Sharon misreads, a conflagration, and a different ending from the book.

Burt Lancaster's Elmer Gantry flashes a lot of gleaming teeth, exercises a manic charm, and proves his mastery of the popular message of purity crusades. (Prohibition had been added to the US Constitution by the Protestant moral entrepreneurs of the early-20th century.) Gantry is a charlatan, but under the false charm is some compassion for others and an ability to laugh at himself that is missing in latter-day preachers such as Pat Robertson.

As the embittered former lover turned cynical prostitute Lulu, Shirley Jones is fine, though I suspect the Academy Award for her performance owed as much to breaking with her Wonder-bread image as to technical accomplishment in acting.

Arthur Kennedy was good at playing a bemused journalist watching the construction by egomaniacs of their legends (he would do this again in "Lawrence of Arabia") and Dean Jagger was a master of fretfulness (Twelve o'clock High, Bad Day at Black Rock).

It seems to me that the most difficult part was that of Sister Sharon, a mixture of vulnerability and willfulness (and, finally, the hubris of faith-healing), an entrepreneur of fundamentalist Christianity who believed in her call and came to believe in Gantry as a fellow instrument of God's will in her divinely mandated ministry. It is as clear as censorship would then allow that they have sex under the dock. Gantry asks her to cast aside her ministry for a normal life with him, but she is more certain than ever of having divine blessing for her plans. ("Pride goeth before the fall" and all. A normal family life was also what Nikos Kazantzakis imagined as The Last Temptation of Christ.)

Although satirizing the anti-vice crusades (wrecking taverns and brothels that were patronized by the leading citizens who piously condemned them) and the world of preaching for profit, both the book and the movie can be read as focusing narrowly on revivalist charlatans rather than on the hypocrisies of Christian churches. Both book and movie are respectful of sincere Christians of good taste. Both movie and book at least imply that beneath the profiteering on the yearnings and resentments of "hicks" and urban "boobs," there is a stratum of sincere faith in both Elmer Gantry and Sister Sharon, though showing them to be conscious hucksters and entertainers, too. (In the book, Gantry has a church at the end rather than leaving the sin and salvation business behind.)

The musical score by Andre Previn is outstanding, though the sound at the end of the opening credits is distorted. The DVD's only extra is an interesting but not well-preserved trailer narrated by Lancaster. There could be more chaptering in the lengthy movie and English-language subtitle. Also, Jones and Simmons are alive and could have commented or been interviewed about the making of a landmark movie. The 1.66:1 video transfer is good though obviously not remastered.

©Moses76, 2004
---
I am reposting this edited contribution to the Minnesota writeoff at the request of Moses76 whose epinions account has disappeared. See my profile page for links to other contributions to the writeoff.



Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD