Elmer Gantry
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Movie Reviews of Elmer Gantry
Movie Review: oscar oscar
Summary: 5 Stars
WHAT A MOVIE!BURT LANCHASTER GIVING THE PREFORMANCE OF HIS LIFE AS A TRAVELING PREACHER WHO HAPPENS TOO LIKE WOMEN AND BOOZE.HE HOOKS UP WITH JEAN SIMMONS,SISTER SHARON FALCONER,WHO ALREADY HAS HER OWN FOLLOWING AS A PREACHER AND THE SPARKS FLY.BURT LANCASTER WAS SO GOOD IN THIS ROLE THAT HE EARNED THE 1960 BEST ACTOR OSCAR FOR HIS WORK AS ELMER.JEAN SIMMONS SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED FOR HER RIVATING PREFORMANCE.THEN WE HAVE SOMEONE FROM ELMERS PAST WHO SHOWS UP HALFWAY THROUGH THE EPIC FILM TO THROW ELMER AGAINST THE CROSS.THAT SOMEONE IS SHIRLEY JONES OF OKLAHOMA AND CAROUSEL FAME WHO PLAYS LULU BAINES,A PROSTITUTE,WHO THREATENS TO RUIN GANTRY.OUR MISS SHIRLEY IS A KNOCKOUT IN THIS FILM AND SHE ALSO BROUGHT HOME THE BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS OSCAR FOR 1960.THE OSCAR REALLY SHOULD HAVE GONE TO JANET LEIGH IN PSYCHO THAT YEAR.WHO COULD EVER FORGET HER PORTRAYAL OF MARION CRANE,THE WOMAN WHO LIKES TO CLEAN OFF IN A SHOWER ONCE IN AWHILE.NEVER THE LESS,SHIRLEY SHINES IN THE ROLE AND DIRECTOR RICHARD BROOKS HITS A HOME RUN. SPEND A FEW HOURS WITH ELMER. YOU WILL BE GLAD YOU DID. A KNOCKOUTMovie Review: Move It On Over Kathryn Kuhlman, Kenny Hagin & Benny Hinn!
Summary: 5 Stars
Burt Lancaster as Elmer Gantry & Jean Simmons as Sister Sharon Falconer. Elmer is a slick salesman who falls head over heals (HA, pun intended) for the self ordained healing prophetess preacher woman who certainly must have been modeled on Amy Semple-MacPherson's Four Square Gospel Church in exsistence today. THE best Upton Sinclair novel in my humble opinion, with a top notch screenplay that follows the novel fairly well, given what you could actually film in 1960. The book itself is much more dicey & really delves into the character of Elmer and his weaknesses for booze, unfaithfulness of all kinds, and sex and is a great study into the mind of a master manipulator.
This film has a timeless quality given the New WORD FAITH MOVEMENT goin on. Call it "Name It & Claim It" Message or The "Health & Wealth" Gospel but Elmer & Sister Sharon could go up against the 1950/60's Kathryn Kuhlman, 1970/80's Kenneth Hagin or Kenneth Copeland, or our new millenium savior, Benny Hinn, ANY OL' DAY! A TRUE GEM of a film, not to be missed!
In MY TOP 25 FILMS of ALL TIME.
Movie Review: Without anesthesia!
Summary: 5 Stars
In the early sixties, the great directors overthrew all the status symbols, the phantom of the recent Cold War, the arouse of new and irreverent generation that did not want to know anything about the recent past; the surrounding echoes of the beatnik mainstream, generated a true outburst of hard to watch films; but certainly this was one the most remarkable of the immense list. Elmer constituted a warning call about the falseness of merchandising people who found a new possibility of making money based on the naïve human condition.
Elmer Gantry is a demolishing movie that showed with the wildest nakedness, the demystification of a supposed preacher man, an educated faker, a man with two faces, who knew to handle the basic strings that impulse the human behavior, that includes the infinite thirst, the insatiable pardon' s hunger in search of a better world after this one.
A slap in the face that still remains intact despite the elapsed years. Lancaster made a bravura performance in this icon movie.
Movie Review: One of Lancaster's Top 2 Performances
Summary: 5 Stars
Most viewers consider this Lancaster's best film that he never would top again in his lengthy film career. I think that he at least equalled or topped it when he was an older man, playing a "has been," in "Atlantic City." Both roles have in common that he is presented to us as a con man, who is taking people for their money, but is not a caricature of such a person. With many layers of complexity, Lancaster gives us Elmer Gantry, a charismatic preacher in early 20th century America who takes the country by storm in his revivalist act. Jean Simmons plays the devout leader of this traveling religious tent show but there is an air of Christian martyrdom about her that is missing from Gantry's preacher persona. Even Gantry though will be shaken to his core as events unfold around him yet he is always a man who lands on his feet. A superb screenplay with wonderful performances all the way around, Sinclair Lewis himself, the novelist, probably would have approved of this version of his work.Movie Review: As true today as in 1960!
Summary: 5 Stars
This energetic movie pounds with the fervor of the everpresent evangelical Christian movement. In a prophetic quote by the novel's author, Nobel Laureate Sinclair Lewis (1885-1951) he said: When fascism hits America, it'll come wrapped in a Flag and a Cross. That's the young Burt Lancaster who deservedly won an Oscar for playing the con-artist preacher in love with a true Joan of Arc, played by the white-robed Jean Simmons, who is sadly consumed by her own fire. Although the quick-smiling Lancaster is indeed a huckster, he is also a man with a soul and a conscience, virtues often neglected in previous reviews. I particularly enjoyed the Director's Hitchcockian technique of naming author Sinclair Lewis, who wrote the well-researched novel, as one of a series of atheists, a terrific joke. I also loved the repeated refrain throughout the movie "Love is the morning star and the evening star." Love indeed is seeing this movie and its stars still shining today in glorious Technicolor.