Religion and the American Experience in Film

Last year I hosted a film series, Religion and the American Experience. In my estimation film is our age's primary art form. The films listed below offer important insight into the passions of religion in our curiously religious culture.

• "Elmer Gantry (1960):" Burt Lancaster and Jean Simmons breathe life into Sinclair Lewis's broad brush novel of the same name. The lead characters, modeled on Billy Sunday and Aimee Semple McPherson are on target, played sympathetically without losing any of Lewis's intended satire.
• "The Prophet" (2003): Robert Duvall is outstanding in portraying a contemporary revivalist who struggles with the conflict between his explosive ego and his calling to do God's work.
  
• "The Crucible" (1996):" Arthur Miller's 1953 play, allegorizing MyCarthyism and the Red Scare through the notorious Salem Witch Trials of the Puritan era. An able cast and stunning cinematography, supporting a well-written script, give the viewer white knuckles throughout.
• "Witness"" (1985) Peter Weir directed this contemporary tale that contrasts the pacifist and communal ways of Lancaster County Amish and Philadelphia corrupt cops, against the smoldering attraction between Harrison Ford, playing a good cop, and Kelly McGillis a winsome Amish widow. The barn raising scene in particular is a lyrical visual poem of cooperation.
• "Inherit the Wind" (1960): Another iconic play translated to film, the subject the notorious Scopes Monkey Trial of the 1920s. Spencer Tracy and Frederick March bring to life their characters, modeled respectively after Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan. The film manages to get into the fundamentalist soul in a kindly but critical way. Gene Kelly is quite good in portraying a newspaper reporter based on the American iconoclast H.L. Mencken. The theme of evolution vs. creationism is once again an issue of American life.
• "Intolerance" (1916): D. W. Griffith's sprawling story of hate versus love in world history. Four stories move in and out of one another from ancient Babylon to a contemporary urban setting. A long, 178 minutes, and somewhat confused narrative arc, it is nonetheless worth the effort, remembering that Griffith created this masterpiece of the silent era while World War I was raging.
• "The Last Temptation of Christ" (1988): Martin Scorsese's adaptation of the Nikos Kazantzakis's novel. Controversial when released, this is a fine example of the endless process of coming to terms with Jesus of Nazareth, portrayed by William Defoe.
  
• "Left Behind: The Movie" (2000): Based on the blockbuster books of the same name, this mundane film on a very unmundane theme (the rapture) is valuable for those unfamiliar with right wing Christian thought on the end of the world in these times.