I've got news for you: Shirley Jones is the reason to see THIS film!

It's got some good points to make, but in the end it suffers a lot from excessive characterizations and generalizations. Yes, there are certainly blind followers out there (sheep being an appropriate term), but not everyone who chooses faith does so out of weak mindedness. The way it portrays the sick and hateful judgment of the public is good though; let's bring em down to our level. Lancaster isn't really anything special in my opinion... just get out of the tent moron!

The primary appeal, and it's significant, is watching Lancaster strut and preen and tear through his rich material like a famished lion. The scenes where he gets to thumb his bible are naturally showstoppers, but he excels in building the entire character, most notably the way he counters ever slight and insult with a deflective booming laugh, a sly but unmistakable signal that his adversaries can swing at him all they like, but he's impervious.

Superb adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' novel: a smooth-talking salesman becomes a tent-revival preacher, and is so good at it, that even we aren't quite sure where the pretense ends and the real man begins. Burt Lancaster is terrific as the brash Gantry; Jean Simmons, Arthur Kennedy, and Shirley Jones are equally superb; special kudos to Ed Andrews' Charlie Babbitt. Richard Brooks' direction and script burst with life and audacity; John Alton's cinematography is marvelous. A real treat throughout.

Everyone was trying hard on this one, but few things are more boring than a message movie in which the message is both delivered with a sledgehammer and wrong. This is both anti-huckster and pro-God, which I'm sure was seen as controversial and daring in 1960, but is really a contradiction in terms. Lancaster is such an obvious phony that you wonder why anyone listens to him; Simmons is supposed to be moving but is wrongheaded and dull, just like everyone who tried to convert me in boyhood

a tour de force performance by Lancaster.............

Burt Lancaster delivers his career topping performance in Richard Brooks' best film.

A somewhat dated and over-acted (under-directed?) film, not overly true to the book, that is still immensely enjoyable. Jean Simmons carried her Guys and Dolls Sister Sarah role to new heights, and Lancaster's patter seemed remarkably similar at times to Robert Preston's earlier Broadway appearance in The Music Man, but then, Preston might have been doing a parody on earlier Lancaster movies, or they both might have viewed tent-show revivalism through similar eyes.

I appreciate what Brooks was going for with this, but by todays standards it seems unbearably tame to simply limit ones attack on religion to revivalist christianity. As the movie doesn't have much going for it visually, the sole interest herein for me was Lancaster, who was good here- not great. All in all, a disappointment.

What worked here really worked: Lancaster is a scoundrel, but at the end, you truly feel bad for the man. Shirley Jones can act circles around some current actresses with the performance she pulled off here, conflicted but assured and manipulative with her sexuality. The ending takes too long to arrive, but when it does it's oblique enough to linger in your mind. I wish they still made films like this.

this movie was just boring, not to mention that i tend to dislike overly religious people, but let's face it, these guys aren't very likable. this movie was not filmed/directed/acted/written or anything else in any way that made it above average, in fact, much of it was below average.

Burt Lancaster is great

A plot you don't see much in films, especially anymore, and one that has more to say than it may appear [it just takes too long to get there]. Elevated by the talent. Lancaster really shows his versatility & an evocative score with suitable direction from Brooks.

Not bad.