wes-connors Charismatic 1920s con-man Burt Lancaster (as Elmer Gantry) switches from sales to sermonizing and joins forces with attractive evangelist Jean Simmons (as Sharon Falconer). They make a successful soul-saving team and become romantically involved, but Mr. Lancaster's fondness for alcohol and affairs eventually causes problems. "Elmer Gantry" adapts only a small part of the Sinclair Lewis novel, yet it seems far too long. While the story is not very exciting, the performances are – this is a film you watch for the acting. In the title role, Lancaster catches the character and is exhilarating throughout. He won "Best Actor" honors from the "Academy Awards", "New York Film Critics", "Golden Globes" and "Film Daily" groups. Minus the "Academy Awards", the aforementioned nominated Ms. Simmons as "Best Actress" for her duplicitous role. In the "Supporting Actress" category, Shirley Jones won the "Academy Award", "Film Daily" and "National Board of Review" honors for her startling portrayal of a bawdy prostitute (Lulu Bains), who explains her teenage sexual awakening as Gantry "rammed the fear of God into me!" Known mostly for wholesome musical roles, Ms. Jones appears rather late in the film, but she is worth the wait. In the "Supporting Actor" category, Arthur Kennedy won the "Film Daily" award for his cynical atheist reporter (Jim Lefferts). So many awards, but so little substance...******* Elmer Gantry (6/29/60) Richard Brooks ~ Burt Lancaster, Jean Simmons, Shirley Jones, Arthur Kennedy

tieman64 Burt Lancaster acted in a number of excellent films during the late 1950s and early 1960s. "Elmer Gantry", directed by Richard Brooks, is one of his best.Set in the early 1920s, the film stars Lancaster as Elmer Gantry, a fast talking charlatan and con man who uses his seductive tongue to weasel his way into the church of Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons), a Christian fundamentalist and female evangelist. Together the duo travel from town to town, setting up massive revival tents and seducing thousands upon thousands of believers.At its best, "Elmer Gantry" draws parallels between the words of business, entertainment and organised religion. In Brooks' hands, the church's foot-soldiers are more hucksters and crafty salesmen than men and women of God. They're selling a product, tailoring their pitches and pep talks to the wants and needs of the people, and even actively manufacturing desires, phobias and neuroses. Lancaster's character is himself a creepy sales machine who always knows exactly which screws to turn. His product? Himself. Ego-maniacal and craving attention, Gantry will do anything to be at the head of a pulpit.Burt Lancaster has often been accused of overacting. His character in "Elmer Gantry" is admittedly bombastic and exuberant, but fittingly so. Like an advertising executive on caffene, Gantry is a man of wild gestures and big promises, though there is subtlety and truth in the way Lancaster sculpts Gantry's smiles and the edges of Gantry's eyes. Gantry's facial features are hard, forced and false, all an act designed to seduce. Think of him as a precursor to Paul Thomas Anderson's Daniel Plainview (based on a 1927 Upton Sinclair novel)."Elmer Gantry" was itself based on less than 100 pages from an ahead-of-its-time novel by Sinclair Lewis (released in 1926). But where Lewis is satirical, edgy, angry, funny and resolutely anti-Christian, Brooks' film is kinder, gentler, ambiguous and scared of offending Christian audiences. Is Brooks' Gantry a believer? It seems so, despite his motivations. Do miracles happen within the film, thereby proving the existence of Christ? Again, it seems so, though the film is ambiguous enough to also suggest the exact opposite. Lewis' stance may have been too militant, even for the supposedly "progressive" 1960s; just another example of how timid cinema can be.Still, as a watered-down critique of fundamentalism, and even religion in a broader sense, the film works well. It's most sympathetic character is an atheist journalist, played by the great, underrated Arthur Kennedy. Kennedy's character sees through everyone's shams, but empathises with them nevertheless. A key scene involves him writing a newspaper article which shocks readers. Gantry and Falconer are hucksters and racketeers, he writes, selling superficialities in a world in which well-meaning intentions, religion and social goods offer no resistance to vices or social evil. Kennedy's readers support him, until the fast talking Elmer Gantry once again shifts popular opinion. Rather than change people, religion tends to force man to compartmentalise, repress or engage in wanton denial.The film missteps in its final act, with a fire-and-brimstone climax and an ending which is arguably too sympathetic toward Gantry. Better to portray him as a snake. A wolf in sheep's clothing. Brooks, though, has Gantry redeemed. He's just another soldier answering God's call. The film's best scene? Gantry stepping into an African American church and singing "I'm On My Way To Canaan's Land". The sequence is brilliant, Gantry's words like a threat, his tongue like the tool of Satan.8.5/10 - Richard Brooks is not well known today, but he directed a number of very good films (think of him as another John Huston). "Elmer Gantry" is one of his best. Worth one viewing.

princebansal1982 Elmer Gantry had nothing new for me in terms of plot. So I was looking forward to good acting to tide me over. Burt Lancaster won an Oscar for his role in this film. But frankly his performance was a bit hammy at times. Certain scenes did require a hammy performance, especially when he was preaching but he did that a lot. Jean Simmons was a delight though. I am a big fan of Audrey Hepburn and she reminds me of her. So that maybe a big reason why I liked her. Another thing that I didn't like was the character Elmer Gantry. The audience is never given a clear picture of him. Is he just a conman or good guy ? Instead he is shown as something of a conman with heart of gold. He just switches between good and bad so fast that I was sometimes left puzzled.

bandw 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.