A Few Words About A few words about...™ Elmer Gantry -- in Blu-ray (1 Viewer)

I had huge concerns about Elmer Gantry, a film that I love.  Richard Brooks adapted the novel by Sinclair Lewis about scandal in the evangelist community -- a huckster involving himself in religion, and not being precisely what his congregants imagined him to be.

This is, of course, fiction.  It would never occur in life.

I've always been a huge fan of both Mr. Lancaster, as well as Ms Simmons, and they're in superb form in Gantry.  Every-sweet Shirley Jones plays way against type.

Released in mid-1960, Gantry should have been shot on the final vestige of Eastman 5248, which means it should be extremely problematic.

One must wonder what's up.

Color, with the exception of a handful of shots, is generally quite good, and sometimes superb.  MGM seems to have pulled a rabbit out of a hat with this one.  Whether derived from sep masters, with the work performed transparently, or from a great IP, the film looks terrific.

Grain structure appears normal, shadow detail, black levels all work nicely.

Audio, which is DTS is also very, very nice.

While the opening credits sport some nice hairline scratches, apparently from wear, that have not been attended to, the rest of the film comes across as non-problematic.

A wonderful film, and a brave one to  make for the era.

Image - 4 (dealing with the scratches would have raised it to 4.5)

Audio - 5

Pass / Fail - Pass

Highly Recommended

RAH

Robert Harris said:

Richard Brooks adapted the novel by Sinclair Lewis about scandal in the evangelist community -- a huckster involving himself in religion, and not being precisely what his congregants imagined him to be.

This is, of course, fiction. It would never occur in life.

Click to expand...

Kyrsten Brad said:

One must wonder though why United Artists didn't try to market a VHS/LD release of this film back in the late 1980s when the Jim Bakker & Jimmy Swaggart scandals broke. They probably would have sold thousands upon thousands of copies.

Click to expand...

Peter Apruzzese said:

It was released on VHS and LD back then.

Click to expand...

Richard Gallagher said:

The only real issue with this Blu-ray is that Andre Previn's theme music suffers from distortion during the last minute or so of the opening credits. I have been told that the distortion is also present in the DVD of Elmer Gantry.

There is no excuse for this. The theme music from the soundtrack is available on CD with no distortion whatsoever. It is too bad that MGM didn't see fit to fix it for the Blu-ray.

Click to expand...

Richard Gallagher said:

The only real issue with this Blu-ray is that Andre Previn's theme music suffers from distortion during the last minute or so of the opening credits. I have been told that the distortion is also present in the DVD of Elmer Gantry.

There is no excuse for this. The theme music from the soundtrack is available on CD with no distortion whatsoever. It is too bad that MGM didn't see fit to fix it for the Blu-ray.

Click to expand...

Thomas T said:

The audio distortion is less than 10 seconds in a film that pushes the 2 1/2 hour mark! I can live with it.

Click to expand...