Film Review – Elmer Gantry (1960)
ELMER GANTRY is a good story of a fast talking Bible Belt appliance salesman who, in the days of Prohibition and the Speak-Easies, manages to climb the ladder of success and transforms himself into a passionate preacher who can shake people up. masses. in all the directions you want.
He accumulates a considerable following in Zenith, Kansas, as the eager companion of Sharon Falconer, an evangelist who has more truth in her soul than Elmer. Gantry milks the entire company for any value to the tragic end when this super street vendor transformation emerges as the main character arc of the entire plot.
Adapted from Sinclair Lewis’s book of the same title, director Richard Brooks created a classic indictment of those revivalists who manipulate the masses for their own ends using Jesus’ message of love as a shield and subterfuge.
The film was nominated for 5 Oscars in 1961 and won 3 of them: Best Actor in a Leading Role for Burt Lancaster, Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Shirley Jones, and Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium for Richard Brooks.
Elmer Gantry (played by considerable fire and brimstone by Burt Lancaster) begins his journey as a big loser, a street appliance vendor in the 1920s who is most successful in making his drinking buddies laugh with obscene jokes and seducing women. young people for one night stands. anything else. Always broke, always moving from city to city, but gifted with the obvious gift of bombastic rhetoric, he finds his calling under the tent of revivalist Sharon Falconer (played by the stunningly beautiful Jean Simmons).
Despite Falconer’s initial reluctance, the fast-talking Gantry manages to gain his trust by delivering his first guest preacher sermon, which ends up being a resounding success.
Many other similar sermons follow: “Sin. Sin, Sin. You are all sinners. You are all doomed. You are all going to the painful, stinking, seething and eternal tortures of a fiery hell.” , created by God for sinners, unless, unless, unless you repent “is an example of the kind of surrender unleashed by Gantry in lethal numbness.
Shooting the success graph with alarming ease, Gantry moves the entire rural tent-based operation to Zenith, Kansas, an urban setting that scares Falconer’s wary business manager. But when the city guarantees to pay Operation Falconer $ 30,000 up front, the deed is done and the company moves to Zenith with a marching band, clowns and great fanfare.
Falconer, Gantry and their team promise to rekindle the fire of devotion in the souls of Zenith’s citizens and fill the empty pews of local churches with new parishioners. In return, local churches promise not to hold any meetings while the Falconer is in town to maximize profits. Falconer and Gantry deliver just that and in the process their relationship moves from a professional level to a very personal level.
One of the key roles in this film is that of veteran Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jim Lefferts (played with great reserve and credibility by Arthur Kennedy), who is the star reporter for the local daily Zenith.
Lefferts offers the skeptical, secular, and pro-scientific counterpoint to Gantry’s high-flying brimstone and hellfire rhetoric hitting the Bible. Even when the Gantry is down and vulnerable to attack, Lefferts sticks to his own professional principles and refuses to exploit outrageous stories that may or may not be true, regardless of their impact on circulation figures.
As such, Lefferts’ character stands as a symbol of objectivity whose vision is not clouded by the dust of fickle emotions that easily stirred up revival. It successfully portrays the counterpoint view that unbridled religious fervor may not be the only source of morality in civic life.
Another important part belongs to Lulu Bains (played by the angelic Shirley Jones who really gives her soul to this supporting role), who is the girl with whom Gantry, in his early days when no one knew him, had a one-night stand and ceremoniously. abandoned the next morning without even saying goodbye, except for a cynical “Merry Christmas” who scribbles on the bedroom mirror with his lipstick while she’s still sleeping.
Now, years later, Lulu meets Gantry again in Zenith, this time working as a child in a disreputable house against which Gantry launches a public cleaning campaign. As the citizens of Zenith follow Gantry’s lead in media-covered nightly raids on hideaways and easy-talking brothels, Lulu takes her revenge with devastating efficiency.
Gantry’s hypocrisy bites him from the back, but not for long. Repenting of how he framed an unsuspecting Gantry in his apartment with the help of his pimp and a photographer for hire, he recants his accusations and admits to framing, thereby returning the reviled Gantry to his burning pulpit. Again, Brooks lets us look at unconventional sources of common virtue.
The film ends with a spectacular scene in which total devastation visits the newly opened tabernacle that Falconer has long dreamed of. The ending reveals the weakness in the way Falconer approached his faith, as well as the way that faith itself has transformed an ordinary suburban girl into a truly spiritual being with healing powers.
Gantry, on the other hand, though he is offered everything he ever dreamed of on a gold plaque, refuses to take over Falconer’s mantle and moves on to the next thing in his life.
He turns his back on true power and even more riches and simply walks away because for the first time in his life he has discovered something in his soul that is truer and more precious than all the external power he achieved through a life of deception. and manipulation.
The film ends on that great note that sometimes divine love will visit us in exactly those moments when we have the courage to turn away from that relentless desire to acquire the same love by force, through our own efforts and collusion.
A 9 out of 10.
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