This movie is riveting. The title character is so developed and yet continually mysterious: as a viewer, you really don't know if he believes in his own act! It was only after I came across _Elmer Gantry_ that I could understand why Jack Lemmon had NOT won the 1960 Oscar (for _Some Like It Hot_). Burt Lancaster gives a performance of a lifetime. To think I took this movie home initially because I figured that, with Lancaster and Jean Simmons, it'd just be "easy on the eyes"! There's nothing easy about the storyline, though. _Elmer Gantry_ makes you think, and feel, and be compeletely unashamed to wonder open-mouthed at what will happen next.