another opening, another show
by
Douglas Messerli
Richard
Brooks (screenplay, based on the novel by Sinclair Lewis) and director Elmer Gantry
/ 1960
Based partly on
Sinclair Lewis sprawling denunciation of revivalist religions, Richard Brooks
film, Elmer Gantry tries to have its
religion and mock too—and almost succeeds in creating a confection that looks
good enough to eat.
Yes, Gantry (brilliantly performed by Burt
Lancaster) is a lying scoundrel who sees religion as a better way to make a living
than his previous career as a salesman. But he’s such a handsome, smiling
charmer, that you can’t blame anyone, female or male, for falling for him. The
saintly self-deluded Sister Sharon Falconer (a character based on
Pentecostalist Aimee Semple McPherson), played by Jean Simmons, has little
resistance when it comes to Gantry, not only allowing him to pair up as a
hell-and-damnation warm-up speaker to her more gentle calls for spiritual
salvation, but to join her in the sack. And even the cynical newspaperman, Jim
Lefferts (Arthur Kennedy), despite his newspaper revelations of Gantry’s sham,
clearly admires the man. A former beau, Lulu Bains (Shirley Jones), who after
Gantry abandoned her, was forced into prostitution, is still in love with him
enough to jealously seek revenge. Gantry is able even to sweet-talk the
Zenith—Lewis’ mythical Midwestern city—preachers into allowing him to take his
unconventional religious circus into their own territory.
In fact, in Gantry’s encounter with the
Babbitt’s and the reverends of that prosperous city, we perceive them to be
greedier that he or Falconer is.. At least the revivalists work hard for their
money.
Certainly Lancaster’s Gantry, if nothing
else, has shown us a right good time in his childish behavior. But by painting his
hero-villain with such pastel colors, we can only wonder, in the end, what
Brooks’ film was all about. What were we supposed to think about his fling with
faith? And what was all the fuss about? Why have the newspaperman trail him,
and reveal and that Gantry and Falconer were, after all, just human folk?
If we might has begun by imagining that
this film might be a denunciation or even a satire of the revivalist
tradition—a fascinating idea for a film that has yet to be made—we come out of
this picture by being quite amused by the whole tradition, as if it were all a
good joke. As a “clean-up man” muses, late in the film:
Mister, I've been converted
five times. Billy Sunday,
Reverend Biederwolf, Gypsy
Smith, and twice by
Sister Falconer. I get
terrible drunk, and then I get
good and saved. Both of them
done me a powerful
lot of good—gettin' drunk
and gettin' saved. Well,
good night.
The
only thing Brooks reveals is that the revival business is simply “another
opening, another show.” Today it has even infected politics: take another look
at Donald Trump.
Los Angeles,
March 10, 2016
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