The World's Greatest SinnerSome people just want to do it all...gotta respect that chutzpah. The World's Greatest Sinner is a morality tale and satire written, directed, starring, and produced by legendary character actor, Timothy Carey. Tim plays a frustrated insurance salesman turned self-appointed messiah/rock star/politician named Clarence Hilliard (later renaming himself as "God" Hilliard). After being fired, Clarence is inspired to prove to the world that each of us are "as gods", and sets out on a crusade--along with his friend and gardener, Alonzo (Gil Barretto) as his first disciple--proclaiming that the only truth in the universe is life on Earth. Unbeknownst to Clarence is that the Devil has planted this seed of sacrilege in his heart, and his corrupted mission threatens to destroy his family and everything else good in the world.
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Made more than sixty years ago, The World's Greatest Sinner stands as one of those pillars of ultra-low budget/do-it-yourself independent movies where one person makes that daring attempt to juggle all of the core responsibilities of the film at once. There are precious few examples where those who have tried have succeeded with flying colors--most noteworthy being Orson Welles with Citizen Kane, but I also favor Shane Carruth's Primer and Upstream Color. But there are far more who soar too high and their wings of wax melt in the heat of the sun; this is where Carey's film likely falls. One can see more than a few echoes in Carey's testament of a man made into a key pawn in the battle between God and the Devil and the self-indulgent works of Ed Wood, such as Glen or Glenda. But then consider the legacy which this movie surely must have left behind, and I'm not even talking about how a young Frank Zappa did the score for it. One doesn't have to squint much to see parallels between Carey's passion project and the notoriously bad The Room by the enigmatic Tommy Wiseau. In fact, a double feature of the two movies would surely call to attention how--whether by mere coincidence or design--Wiseau's film owes much in its construction (should that be "destruction"?) to Timothy Carey's The World's Greatest Sinner. There is a genuine undertone of awkward comedy in both films. Clarence's life is shown to be utterly halcyon as he rides around on horseback with his wife, Edna (Betty Rowland), and their two children, before the scheming Devil gets involved. He almost always wears a suit, and acts as though he has tapped into some deep wisdom of the universe which no one else seems to understand. But Clarence is doomed, because forces outside of his control conspire to use him; in this film, it is the Devil, while in Wiseau's movie, it was his best friend and future wife. One thing that Clarence is in no small supply of is confidence. His proclamation to eliminate death and make men as gods comes out of nowhere, and he goes about attempting to build his church by proselytizing on street corners at first. (Carey has no illusions that his protagonist is a fool, even having him standing on bags of fertilizer while delivering his sermon at one point.) But it isn't until Clarence witnesses the fervor with which a group of screaming fans lay into a rock performance that he realizes that he must form his own band in order to call his flock to worship. His routine is a deliberate satire of Elvis Pressley, complete with gold lamé and gyrations, drawing immediate comparisons with both Elvis and some practices associated with Charismatic Christianity. But since none other than Satan has stirred Clarence's spirit into action, both his message and subsequent sinful indulgences of the flesh are evidence that he is no true messiah. That he calls himself a "politician" feels so on-the-nose that it is impossible to mistake The World's Greatest Sinner as being anything less than a complete satire and condemnation of the hypocrisies of those in power.
Clarence's rise to power comes with more changes to his image, from an artificial soul patch he glues onto his face to outright changing his first name to God. Virtually every time someone addresses him as "God", it is played for irony, even when his disciples try to comfort him. It's not that The World's Greatest Sinner is critical of faith so much as it is of those who would exploit it for personal gain. When a political manager offers to take his brand to the next level (i.e. run for office), he becomes the living embodiment of history's most notorious demagogues, shouting and making promises that he cannot possibly keep (including funding medical science to make everyone immortal). He shamelessly sleeps with underage girls and even coerces a disaffected follower to commit suicide. But after an argument with his family where he harshly slaps his daughter, Betty (Gail Griffin), for trying to bring him back into the light of God's love, he has a crisis of conscience. He believes that if he can cause a Communion wafer to bleed by piercing it with a nail, that it will be a sign that God is real and that he has been leading his followers astray. So despite his depravity, similar to Dorian Gray, he has an understanding of objective morality...he's just buried it so deep in sin as to have all but forgotten about it. Carey delights in this climactic moment of truth, where audiences should expect that Clarence will stab his finger with the nail, creating a kind of false revelation to satisfy the requirements of a morality tale. Instead, the end of the film twists our expectations about divine intervention by way of a bizarre trail of blood (or slime, perhaps) that leads Clarence to an inscrutable truth. The World's Greatest Sinner is an odd movie, perhaps a reflection of its idiosyncratic creator. It feels like it can't be troubled to be coherent because its message is too important. (Yes, the contradiction is intentional.) The movie isn't just brief, it barely qualifies as a full-length film at less than eighty minutes long. The end credits are unorthodox in the extreme, where the roles of performers are identified by an image rather than a title, and the film finally closes out with the enigmatic message, "The Beginning". All of the acting--especially Carey's--is deliriously hammy or amateur, and the production of the film is so shoddy that some scenes are outright unintelligible. Nevertheless, there is an uncanny allure about The World's Greatest Sinner carried exclusively on Carey's performance, complete with his characteristic drooping eyes and drawling Brooklyn accent, both always hinting at barely concealed menace. In a way, The World's Greatest Sinner is a mad work of art instead of a proper movie--in that Andy Warhol kind of way--and is best viewed as such. One has but to look and see how, despite its age, its legacy has endured. I suppose that is a kind of "immortality".
Recommended for: Fans of a strange and demented one-man show, that combines satire and ultra low-budget production, and has clearly informed other independent filmmakers and performance artists, even if only by infiltrating the collective unconscious with this oddball movie. Although The World's Greatest Sinner will never be regarded as a competent film, it is a fascinating novelty and an insightful look into the versatility (or at least the ambition) of one of cinema's most intriguing character actors.
Clarence's rise to power comes with more changes to his image, from an artificial soul patch he glues onto his face to outright changing his first name to God. Virtually every time someone addresses him as "God", it is played for irony, even when his disciples try to comfort him. It's not that The World's Greatest Sinner is critical of faith so much as it is of those who would exploit it for personal gain. When a political manager offers to take his brand to the next level (i.e. run for office), he becomes the living embodiment of history's most notorious demagogues, shouting and making promises that he cannot possibly keep (including funding medical science to make everyone immortal). He shamelessly sleeps with underage girls and even coerces a disaffected follower to commit suicide. But after an argument with his family where he harshly slaps his daughter, Betty (Gail Griffin), for trying to bring him back into the light of God's love, he has a crisis of conscience. He believes that if he can cause a Communion wafer to bleed by piercing it with a nail, that it will be a sign that God is real and that he has been leading his followers astray. So despite his depravity, similar to Dorian Gray, he has an understanding of objective morality...he's just buried it so deep in sin as to have all but forgotten about it. Carey delights in this climactic moment of truth, where audiences should expect that Clarence will stab his finger with the nail, creating a kind of false revelation to satisfy the requirements of a morality tale. Instead, the end of the film twists our expectations about divine intervention by way of a bizarre trail of blood (or slime, perhaps) that leads Clarence to an inscrutable truth. The World's Greatest Sinner is an odd movie, perhaps a reflection of its idiosyncratic creator. It feels like it can't be troubled to be coherent because its message is too important. (Yes, the contradiction is intentional.) The movie isn't just brief, it barely qualifies as a full-length film at less than eighty minutes long. The end credits are unorthodox in the extreme, where the roles of performers are identified by an image rather than a title, and the film finally closes out with the enigmatic message, "The Beginning". All of the acting--especially Carey's--is deliriously hammy or amateur, and the production of the film is so shoddy that some scenes are outright unintelligible. Nevertheless, there is an uncanny allure about The World's Greatest Sinner carried exclusively on Carey's performance, complete with his characteristic drooping eyes and drawling Brooklyn accent, both always hinting at barely concealed menace. In a way, The World's Greatest Sinner is a mad work of art instead of a proper movie--in that Andy Warhol kind of way--and is best viewed as such. One has but to look and see how, despite its age, its legacy has endured. I suppose that is a kind of "immortality".
Recommended for: Fans of a strange and demented one-man show, that combines satire and ultra low-budget production, and has clearly informed other independent filmmakers and performance artists, even if only by infiltrating the collective unconscious with this oddball movie. Although The World's Greatest Sinner will never be regarded as a competent film, it is a fascinating novelty and an insightful look into the versatility (or at least the ambition) of one of cinema's most intriguing character actors.