ELMER GANTRY is a good story of a fast-talking appliance salesman about the Bible Belt who, in the days of Prohibition and Speak-Easies, countered his path to success and turns into a fiery preacher who can agitate the masses. in any direction he wants.
He builds a considerable following in Zenith, Kansas, as an enthusiastic companion of Sharon Falconer, an evangelist who has more truth in her soul than Elmer. Gantry treats the whole business for whatever its worth until the tragic end when this super huckster's transformation emerges as the main arc of the whole plot.
Adapted from Sinclair Lewis 'book of the same title, director Richard Brooks has created a classic indictment against those revivalists who manipulate the masses for their own ends by 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 Supporting Actress for Shirley Jones and Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium for Richard Brooks.
Elmer Gantry (played by Burt Lancaster by Considerable Fire and Brimstone) begins his journey as the Biggest Loser, a household appliance salesman in the 1920s who is more successful at cracking his drinking buddies with obscene jokes and seduce young women overnight than anything else. Always broke, always moving from one city to another, but endowed with the obvious gift of explosive rhetoric, he finds his vocation in the tent of the revivalist Sharon Falconer (played by the incredible beauty Jean Simmons).
Despite Falconer's initial reluctance, the quick-speaking Gantry manages to gain his confidence to deliver his first sermon as a guest preacher, which ends in resounding success.
Many other such sermons follow: “Sin. Sin, Sin. You are all sinners. You are all doomed to perdition. You are all going to the painful, stinking, scalding and eternal tortures of a fiery hell., created by God for sinners, unless, unless, unless you repent ”is an example of the type of delivery unleashed by Gantry in mortal dozens.
Pulling the graph of success with alarming ease, Gantry moves the entire tent-based rural operation to Zenith, Kansas, an urban environment that frightens Falconer's cautious business manager. But when the city guarantees to pay in advance Operation Falconer $ 30,000, the deed is done and the troupe settles in Zenith with a marching band, clowns and a large marching band.
Falconer, Gantry and their team promise to rekindle the fire of devotion in the souls of the citizens of Zenith and to 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 offer just that and in the process their relationship goes 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 ace reporter for the local daily Zenith.
Lefferts provides the skeptical, secular and pro-scientific counterpoint to Gantry's hellfire and brimstone rhetoric. Even when Gantry is down and vulnerable to attack, Lefferts sticks to his own professional tenets and refuses to exploit scandalous stories that may or may not be true, regardless of their impact on broadcast numbers.
As such, the character of Lefferts comes across as a symbol of objectivity whose vision is not clouded by the dust of inconstant emotions easily stirred up by revivalism. It successfully portrays the counterpoint that unbridled religious fervor may not be the only source of morality in civic life.
Another important role belongs to Lulu Bains (played by angelica 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 an affair of one night with and ceremoniously thrown out the next morning without even saying goodbye, except for a cynical "Merry Christmas" he scribbles on the bedroom mirror with his lipstick on while she is still sleeping.
Years later, Lulu meets Gantry again in Zenith, this time working as a girl in a bad name house against which Gantry launches a public cleanup campaign. As the citizens of Zenith follow Gantry's lead in high-profile nightly raids on hiding places and talking brothels, Lulu takes revenge with devastating efficiency.
Gantry's hypocrisy bites him from the back, but not for long. Repenting for the way she framed an unsuspecting Gantry in her apartment with the help of her pimp and a photographer for hire, she retracts and admits the frame, thereby re-establishing a vilified Gantry to his burning pulpit. Again, Brooks allows us to gain insight into unconventional sources of common virtue.
The film ends with a spectacular scene in which utter devastation visits the newly opened tabernacle that Falconer has dreamed of for so long. The ending reveals both the weakness in the way Falconer approached her faith, as well as how the same faith transformed an ordinary fellow girl into a truly spiritual being with healing powers.
Gantry, on the other hand, despite being offered everything he ever dreamed of on a golden plate, refuses to take over from Falconer and moves on to the next stage in his life.
He turns his back on true power and even more wealth and walks away simply because for the first time in his life he has discovered something in his soul that is truer and more precious than any outside power. which he managed to grasp through a life of deception and manipulation.
The film ends with this excellent note that sometimes divine love will visit us exactly at those moments when we have the courage to move away from this relentless desire to acquire the same love by force, by our own efforts and complicity.
A 9 out of 10.
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