It's said that the three topics that people should avoid at all costs in conversation are money, politics, and religion due to the amount of passion in people's beliefs in certain issues and that is especially true in this day in age, and the three topics along with sex are the themes explored in Richard Brooks's "Elmer Gantry" which is a scathing attack and commentary on religious fundamentalism. Burt Lancaster stars in the performance that won him his only Oscar as Gantry a fast-talking, hard-drinking and charming salesman who will do anything for money and one day sees flyers around town for Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) a young woman with a huge following for revivalism whom Gantry falls in love with and does anything to convince her that he can preach the Gospel and get her even bigger crowds despite not being the truest believer, and at first Falconer's manager Bill Morgan (Dean Jagger) doesn't like Gantry due to the fact that he feels that Gantry is nothing but a fraud but develops a respect for him due to the big ambitions for the church such as going to Zenith. There is a local newspaper reporter who is covering all of this big action named Jim Lefferts (Arthur Kennedy) who is an agnostic and despises corrpution but admires Gantry for his strengths as a salesman but questions the credibility of both Gantry and Falconer as a religious duo. All the notoriety of the Gantry-Falconer duo comes to the attention of Gantry's lover who became a prostitute named Lulu Baines (Shirley Jones) who he sees when storming into a brothel and decrying prostitution as a shameful action until he sees her he tells his followers that it's their choice to be prostitutes and tells the police captain to get them out of town in 24 hours. Which is where Baines's jealousy steps in in which her plan is to lure Gantry to his apartment get him to kiss her and try to get Sister Falconer to break up with him which leads to the papers publishing the story and Gantry's downfall until she confesses that she framed him after seeing him get publicly humiliated in the church. Everything about the movie is great up until the ending which is totally unnecessary and stupid which won't be revealed here, the movie has strong performances throughout especially by Lancaster, Simmons, Kennedy, Jagger, and Jones thanks to strong direction and an Oscar winning screenplay by Richard Brooks. During the time the movie was being made not many studios were interested in making it due to the content of attacking religion being highly controversial at the time aslo in part due to biblical epics being churned out by Hollywood studios every year which took a lot of guts to get a movie like this to be made especially in a Christian society. This is a great movie but it isn't for everyone especially devout Christians becuase Lancaster wanted this movie to be an attack on the late Reverend Billy Graham, but the respectable thing the movie does is that it doesn't mock people for worshipping God in any church or place of worship.
Review of Elmer Gantry
