This film is not only good; it misses being great by a narrow margin. With a long line of charismatic cinematic rogues to his credit, Burt Lancaster pulls off a barnstorming performance as Elmer Gantry, the salesman turned opportunistic evangelist whose fast-talking pitch scarcely slackens, off-stage or on. But for my money it is Jean Simmonds, surely robbed of her own Oscar here, who has the most impressive part.
Her ethereal Sister Sharon is an idealist who truly believes in her calling -- and is devastated when reporter Jim Lefferts calmly takes her assumptions apart -- but she is more than just a plaster saint, let alone the push-over Gantry initially counts upon. She has the logistics of her operation at her fingertips, sees through Gantry's act at first glance, and faces up to officialdom and blackmail alike with equal courage. Simmonds performs with conviction in her varying role as angelic preacher, self-possessed businesswoman, carefree girl and woman in love, and it's unclear why it was co-star Shirley Jones who received both Oscar nomination and award. As Lulu Baines, the girl whose seduction and ruin caused Gantry's earlier expulsion from theological college and whose reappearance threatens his newfound success, Jones plays a pivotal part in the plot, and conveys the character's crucial wavering between vengeance and sympathy for her lover; but I felt Simmonds' was the greater challenge and the greater, unrecognised, achievement.
The filmed version is perhaps inevitably softened from the savage satire of the book, presumably in quest of popular appeal; it certainly succeeded so far as I was concerned. Lancaster's Gantry is a more sympathetic and attractive character than the original. He uses his huckster's tricks to sell religion, but at the heart of it he has a genuine naive faith; he seduces Sister Sharon as he always intended, but as far as he is capable he loves her and she redeems him. He uses his rhetoric to undermine Jim Lefferts with his employer, just as the reporter uses the logic of his own sharpened pencil to rip apart and expose the revivalists' operation, and yet the two men share a mutual knowledge and respect that verges on friendship.
Ultimately, Gantry achieves a Christ-like moment of his own when he endures humiliation at the hands of a vengeful mob as if in payment for the disaster his actions have brought upon Sister Sharon, standing mutely beneath the pelting filth with no move toward the self-defence, both verbal and physical, in which he normally excels. And it is from this spectacle -- admirably played by Lancaster in resignation as in flamboyance -- that Lulu flees, unable to bear what she has brought about.
This is not, however, the story of Elmer Gantry's redemption, and it is in the handling of the ending that in my view the film chiefly misses greatness. The outcome, while perhaps deliberately ambiguous, is confused.
The plot mandates that Sister Sharon perish in the fire, but the methods chosen to achieve this make both her and the scriptwriters appear idiotic. The presentation of her attempts to prevent the congregation leaving, in the face of what is here shown as clear and present danger, and her own determination to remain, came across as unmotivated and bizarre in a woman who has previously seemed realistic and practical. In consequence the sequence drags out beyond the bounds of plausibility, while the final shot of her miraculously white and untouched among the flames is just tasteless.
Rather than casting her as Joan of Arc, I feel it would have made more sense to shorten the scene, indicating her human reluctance to abandon her life's work if there is the faintest chance of saving it, having her trampled by the crowd and then struck down by the falling beam that as shot just misses her, and then, just as in the film, having the floor give way beneath Gantry before he can reach her -- and using *that* as the climax of the sequence. A couple of tiny changes to existing material, 30 seconds or so of cuts, and the climax could have been so much more coherent. It might even have served to redeem the coda afterwards, where the lack of satisfactory resolution is I think intentional...
'Elmer Gantry' is intelligent, attractive, and -- at least to my mind -- more subtle in its satire of hellfire evangelism than its source material. Outstanding is the role of Jim Lefferts the cynic, who tags along with the show in order to sell copy on its charades, but finds himself touched by its purely human side; in many ways he represents the modern audience, pre-empting our mockery and distaste and hence preventing them from destroying the illusion. (It is a mark of the film's sophistication that this character is presented neither as hero nor killjoy villain.)
The ending, however, isn't really up to the standards of the rest.
Her ethereal Sister Sharon is an idealist who truly believes in her calling -- and is devastated when reporter Jim Lefferts calmly takes her assumptions apart -- but she is more than just a plaster saint, let alone the push-over Gantry initially counts upon. She has the logistics of her operation at her fingertips, sees through Gantry's act at first glance, and faces up to officialdom and blackmail alike with equal courage. Simmonds performs with conviction in her varying role as angelic preacher, self-possessed businesswoman, carefree girl and woman in love, and it's unclear why it was co-star Shirley Jones who received both Oscar nomination and award. As Lulu Baines, the girl whose seduction and ruin caused Gantry's earlier expulsion from theological college and whose reappearance threatens his newfound success, Jones plays a pivotal part in the plot, and conveys the character's crucial wavering between vengeance and sympathy for her lover; but I felt Simmonds' was the greater challenge and the greater, unrecognised, achievement.
The filmed version is perhaps inevitably softened from the savage satire of the book, presumably in quest of popular appeal; it certainly succeeded so far as I was concerned. Lancaster's Gantry is a more sympathetic and attractive character than the original. He uses his huckster's tricks to sell religion, but at the heart of it he has a genuine naive faith; he seduces Sister Sharon as he always intended, but as far as he is capable he loves her and she redeems him. He uses his rhetoric to undermine Jim Lefferts with his employer, just as the reporter uses the logic of his own sharpened pencil to rip apart and expose the revivalists' operation, and yet the two men share a mutual knowledge and respect that verges on friendship.
Ultimately, Gantry achieves a Christ-like moment of his own when he endures humiliation at the hands of a vengeful mob as if in payment for the disaster his actions have brought upon Sister Sharon, standing mutely beneath the pelting filth with no move toward the self-defence, both verbal and physical, in which he normally excels. And it is from this spectacle -- admirably played by Lancaster in resignation as in flamboyance -- that Lulu flees, unable to bear what she has brought about.
This is not, however, the story of Elmer Gantry's redemption, and it is in the handling of the ending that in my view the film chiefly misses greatness. The outcome, while perhaps deliberately ambiguous, is confused.
The plot mandates that Sister Sharon perish in the fire, but the methods chosen to achieve this make both her and the scriptwriters appear idiotic. The presentation of her attempts to prevent the congregation leaving, in the face of what is here shown as clear and present danger, and her own determination to remain, came across as unmotivated and bizarre in a woman who has previously seemed realistic and practical. In consequence the sequence drags out beyond the bounds of plausibility, while the final shot of her miraculously white and untouched among the flames is just tasteless.
Rather than casting her as Joan of Arc, I feel it would have made more sense to shorten the scene, indicating her human reluctance to abandon her life's work if there is the faintest chance of saving it, having her trampled by the crowd and then struck down by the falling beam that as shot just misses her, and then, just as in the film, having the floor give way beneath Gantry before he can reach her -- and using *that* as the climax of the sequence. A couple of tiny changes to existing material, 30 seconds or so of cuts, and the climax could have been so much more coherent. It might even have served to redeem the coda afterwards, where the lack of satisfactory resolution is I think intentional...
'Elmer Gantry' is intelligent, attractive, and -- at least to my mind -- more subtle in its satire of hellfire evangelism than its source material. Outstanding is the role of Jim Lefferts the cynic, who tags along with the show in order to sell copy on its charades, but finds himself touched by its purely human side; in many ways he represents the modern audience, pre-empting our mockery and distaste and hence preventing them from destroying the illusion. (It is a mark of the film's sophistication that this character is presented neither as hero nor killjoy villain.)
The ending, however, isn't really up to the standards of the rest.