Elmer Gantry (1960)

Surprisingly incoherent and boring

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Good start, but then it gets ruined

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I'm a huge fan of Burt Lancaster. He was one the best actors, for me maybe even the best one. But his Oscar performance here is just way over the top.The movie is too long, didn't age well and seems to go nowhere. The big mistake is that warning at the beginning. It confused me, and probably others too, because it's clearly pro-Christianity and against revivalists, but then it doesn't decide if Elmer is a conman or a good man. Did he believe what he was preaching or was he only acting? If acting, what for? Just for the love of the evangelist woman?! For money? The movie never decides what kind of person Elmer actually is.A crowd comes to the tend to disturb the service, but when the evangelist woman starts to pray they all instantly get on their knees and pray with her, forgetting that they went there to mock her. She even healed a man, but we don't know if the movie shows this as something good or evil.And then there is this reporter, who is an atheist, and yet he goes to every sermon and is fascinated by the evangelist woman. He also never really draws a line.I really wanted to like this movie but its woolly message makes it weak.

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.

We love retro fashion and design because there's beauty and a touch of irony in nostalgic simplicity. If I want a mindless good time in film land, there's nothing like a trip to the past that never existed. I'm thinking of Doris Day singing over daisies and the like. But wait, there's more ladies, I bring you Elmer Gantry, circa 1960. This film really breaks the mold, I mean not moldy at all, in fact disturbingly current in it's profile of a man living by his wits alone who scores big time when he discovers the path to success through exploiting the town folks religious beliefs.Elmer Gantry is a shady traveling salesman who happens upon a revival meeting. When he sees the beautiful evangelist Sister Sharon Falconer filling the tent up with paying sinners, a light bulb goes off. Forget farm tools, religion is the plastics of 1920′s America. There's a point where you start to believe that Elmer will go straight. Alas, he can't escape his womanizing past with the reappearance of Lulu Baines, the bawdy bad girl he can't forget.There's so much going on here. Elmer Gantry was based on a novel by Sinclair Louis. We've got Shirley Jones in her Oscar winning role as Lulu Baines. Yes, that Shirley, the Partridge Family mom. Remember now, it's 1960 and Lulu describes a scene saying, "he rammed the fear of God into me so fast I never heard my old man's footsteps." Oh yeah, and "you're amusing and you smell like a real man"

Burt Lancaster's Oscar Winning performance in the title role was well-worth the accolades. He really shines as a tarnished, immoral salesman who spends Christmas at a bar and leaves with one of the ladies during the Great Depression in the heartland. As the film progresses, we learned of Elmer Gantry's past especially his own previous desire to be a minister/preacher. Elmer Gantry is as lost as those who followed in the tent revivals that swept the country during hard times. He manipulates his way into Sister Sharon Falconer (played brilliantly by the late Jean Simmons who should have won an Oscar for her performance in this role). The film is beautifully visual and as Elmer Gantry's past comes haunting again to tarnish the tent revival and watch Gantry and Sister Sharon fall again. Shirley Jones won an Oscar for best supporting actress in her role as the woman who can bring Gantry down. I think she does a brilliant job but I wished that she had more speaking moments. Still the supporting cast is brilliant as well. It's a first rate film!