Elmer Gantry was a long movie, nearly two and a half hours, and it only covered 100 pages of the novel by Sinclair Lewis, which makes me think the book was very fast moving. Starring Burt Lancaster as a salesman turned evangelist. He begins working with an Aimee Semple McPhereson-like revivalist played by Jean Simmons.
Elmer Gantry wasn't that horrible a person. He beat the crap out of Shirley Jones' pimp.
He did get annoying after a while. He needed to turn off the charm and take it easy now and then. I didn't like all the fake laughing.
The movie didn't conflate revivalism with mainline Christianity the way Leap of Faith did years later in 1992. I got dragged to that movie. It starred Steve Martin. I was anti-religious enough but I couldn't understand why they would think that all Christians believed in faith healing and would fall for blatantly phony miracles. I also didn't understand why they thought exposing Steve Martin's sad past as an orphan and delinquent discredited his religion. But Elmer Gantry and Sister Sharon Falconer (Jean Simmons) tried to hide their pasts, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment