Elmer Gantry

Hi Aki,

Tonight we watched Richard Brooks’s only great film, Elmer Gantry. Wow it was good though I do have some quibbles – at times the production can’t quite give the sense of scale necessary, and the back-lot, stage-bound large sets were a bit of a problem. John Alton, one of the greatest black and white DPs, shot, and color wasn’t his big thing, alas.

Story is from Sinclair Lewis’s novel about revivalism and touring preachers in the early nineteen-twenties. Elmer Gantry, a traveling salesman, falls in love from afar with Sister Sharon Falconer, a headlining preacher, and finagles and cons his way into the organization. With Elmer’s help, Sister Sharon really hits the big time.

There are complications along the way, and much is given over to questions of faith, and tent revivalism, a form of show business, as opposed to real churches. The movie has a lot to say about today’s evangelical movement which has its roots in these revivals, and about today’s megachurches, which are the heirs of Sister Sharon and her kind. I believe that Lewis based his sister Sharon character on Aimee Semple Mcpherson, a famous preacher in California who disappeared under strange circumstances – I don’t know the details.

The movie, made in 1960, was nominated for many Oscars. Burt Lancaster stars as Gantry, Jean Simmons as Sister Sharon, Arthur Kennedy as the cynical newspaperman, and in supporting role and best actress winner, Shirley Jones – gosh she was cute and sexy in this picture.

Richard Brooks was a screenwriter who went on to be writer/director, but his movies are usually a bit preachy, and as a director he rarely did more than shoot his scripts. This was about the best he did, though some might prefer The Professionals, a western he made about 7 years later.

Generally I find his movies bad and self-important, preachy, and not well done. This one though really does get me. The performances are really good, and I guess the novel had some great lines and scenes, because they show up here much better than Brooks usually can manage.

(written around 8 March 2009)