Arguably overlong, but ultimately affecting and thought provoking, powered by an amazingly dynamic and charismatic performance by Burt Lancaster.
The film takes what could have been an easy target -- evangelism -- and paints things in shades of grey, not black and white. Everyone’s motives are complex, everyone does good and bad, and holds both inside. Characters may lean one way or another, but this is a film without a villain or a hero.
Lancaster plays a fast talking, womanizing, hard-drinking salesman and con man, who way back had also been studying to be a preacher – before seducing the deacon’s daughter. He’s a fascinating construction – a man who believes in God, but doesn’t let that get in the way of drinking, seducing and taking advantage of people by using that very belief. He spots Jean Simmons’s traveling revival show, and decides to worm his way in to make some cash. But even her character shows cracks, and isn’t simply the piety driven character we think she is at first. (To me, Simmons seems miscast in this, as she did in Spartacus. For one thing, her upper class English accent makes her choice of playing these lower-class, hard-scrabble women very odd. She not bad, there’s just no way she can keep up with Lancaster.)
Arthur Kennedy as a reporter covering Sister Falconer’s adventures on the road fares better. Like Lancaster he’s an interesting mix of contradictions, an atheist who respects true belief. but mistrusts everyone’s motives, and also has a grudging respect for an honest con job.
Lastly Shirley Jones is terrific as a hooker who’s and old flame of Lancaster’s and now wants to get even. Sexy, manipulative, but still sad and lost, she’s miles from the nice girl - and later nice mom - characters most people know Jones for.
On the down side - and maybe part of the problem with the length - most of the twists and turns can be seen coming from a mile off, even if well played, written, and directed. The middle gets a bit repetitive. And there are a few moments that are painfully dated.
But by the end I was impressed to see a 1960 Hollywood film about religion that wasn’t a polemic, and provokes as many questions about the nature, motives and results of faith and preaching as it gives answers.
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