ELMER GANTRY is a good story of a fast-talking appliance salesman from the Bible Belt who, in the days of Prohibition and Speak-Easies, works his way up the ladder of success and transforms himself into a fiery preacher who can stir up the masses. in all the directions he wants.
He amassed a sizable following in Zenith, Kansas, as the enthusiastic companion of Sharon Falconer, an evangelist who has more truth in her soul than Elmer. Gantry milks the entire company for whatever it is worth until the tragic ending when this super huckster’s transformation emerges as the main character arc of the entire plot.
Adapted from Sinclair Lewis’s book of the same title, director Richard Brooks crafted a classic indictment of those evangelists 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 Actress in a Supporting Role for Shirley Jones, and Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium for Richard Brooks.
Elmer Gantry (played by Burt Lancaster with considerable fire and brimstone) begins his journey as a big loser, an appliance peddler in the 1920s who finds more success making his drinking buddies laugh with lewd jokes and seducing young women. for one night stands. anything else. Always broke, always moving from town to town, but endowed 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, fast-moving Gantry manages to gain his confidence to deliver his first sermon as a guest preacher, which ends up being a smashing 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, scalding, eternal tortures of a fiery hell.” , created by God for sinners, unless, unless you repent” is an example of the kind of surrender unleashed by Gantry in lethal torments.
Adding to 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 town guarantees to pay $30,000 up front to Operation Falconer, the deed is done and the company moves to Zenith with a marching band, clowns and great fanfare.
Falconer, Gantry, and their team vow to reignite the fire of devotion in the souls of the citizens of Zenith and fill the empty pews of local churches with new parishioners. In return, the local churches promise not to hold any meetings while Falconer is in town to maximize profits. Falconer and Gantry offer just that, and in the process, their relationship transitions 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 newspaper 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 principles and refuses to exploit outrageous stories that may or may not be true, regardless of his impact on circulation numbers.
As such, Lefferts’s character stands as a symbol of objectivity whose vision is not clouded by the dust of fickle emotions that revivalism so easily kicks up. He successfully portrays the counterpoint view that unbridled religious fervor may not be the only source of morality in civic life.
Another important role belongs to Lulu Bains (played by the angelic Shirley Jones, who really brings 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 with. and ceremoniously Dumped the next morning without even saying goodbye, except for a cynical “Merry Christmas” which he scribbles on the bedroom mirror with his lipstick while she’s still asleep.
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 cleansing campaign. As the citizens of Zenith follow Gantry’s lead in media-covered nightly raids on clandestine hideouts and brothels, Lulu exacts her revenge with devastating effectiveness.
Gantry’s hypocrisy bites him from behind, but not for long. Repenting of how he framed an unsuspecting Gantry in his apartment with the help of his pimp and a hired photographer, he recants his accusations and admits to the framing, thus restoring the reviled Gantry back to his pulpit. on fire. Once again, Brooks allows us to take a look at 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, and the way that same faith has transformed an ordinary girl from the slums into a truly spiritual being with healing powers.
Gantry, on the other hand, though offered everything he ever dreamed of on a golden plate, refuses to take up the Falconer 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 managed to gain in a lifetime. deceit and manipulation.
The film ends on that great note that sometimes divine love will visit us at exactly those moments when we have the courage to walk away from that incessant desire to forcefully acquire that same love, through our own efforts and collusion.
At 9 out of 10.
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