Heavens Above!

Heavens Above!
Directed by	John Boulting Roy Boulting
Produced by	John Boulting Roy Boulting
Written by	Frank Harvey Jr.
Starring	Peter Sellers Bernard Miles Cecil Parker
Music by	Richard Rodney Bennett
Cinematography	Mutz Greenbaum
Distributed by	British Lion Films Romulus Films
Release date(s)	1963
Running time	113 min.
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English

Heavens Above! is a 1963 British satirical comedy film starring Peter Sellers, directed by John and Roy Boulting, who also co-wrote along with Frank Harvey, from an idea by Malcolm Muggeridge. It is in much the same vein as earlier collaborations between Sellers, Harvey and the Boultings, Private's Progress and I'm All Right Jack.

Plot

The plot features Sellers as a naive but caring prison chaplain accidentally assigned as vicar to a small and prosperous country town of Orbiston Parva, in place of Ian Carmichael's upper-class cleric, with whom he shares a name. His belief in charity and forgiveness sets him at odds with the locals, whose assertions that they are good, Christian people are in Smallwood's view belied by their behaviour and ideas. He creates social ructions by appointing a black dustman (Brock Peters) as his churchwarden, taking in a gypsy family, and persuading local landowner Lady Despard (Isabel Jeans) to provide free food for the church to distribute free to the people of the town. However, all his good works lead to trouble.

Cast

• Peter Sellers as The Reverend John Smallwood
• Cecil Parker as Archdeacon Aspinall
• Isabel Jeans as Lady Despard
• Ian Carmichael as The Other Smallwood
• Bernard Miles as Simpson
• Brock Peters as Matthew Robinson
• Eric Sykes as Harry Smith
• Irene Handl as Rene Smith
• Miriam Karlin as Winnie Smith
• Joan Miller as Mrs. Smith-Gould
• Miles Malleson as Rockeby
• Eric Barker as Bank Manager
• William Hartnell as Major Fowler, town councillor
• Roy Kinnear as Fred Smith
• Joan Hickson as Housewife
• Kenneth Griffith as Reverend Owen Smith
• Mark Eden as Sir Geoffrey Despard
• John Comer as Butcher
• Basil Dignam as Prisoner Governor
• Franklyn Engelman as TV Commentator
• Colin Gordon as Prime Minister

The cast includes Steve Marriott who has an uncredited role in the film. Sellers' performance is generally held to be outstanding, in a meatier, more dramatic role than most he had previously taken on, but many find the ending a little ill-fitting and silly.^{[citation needed]}

Analysis

The Revd John Smallwood must have been modelled on eighteenth-century picturesque guru William Gilpin : "The first act of the new reverend is to invite a group of colourful gypsies to reside in the vicarage; the second is to convince an old lady to open her house and grounds to all sorts of poor vagabonds, scruffs and vagrants, characters who bring picturesque values to the noble scene. Eventually, a picturesque economic system based on free donation causes havoc in the village and the nation - the reverend is made a bishop and sent into space, in England's first spaceship. The film revives a character that one can safely imagine as a modern version of Doctor Syntax - cordial, dedicated, stubborn, fearless, not reacting against, but slightly diverging from, the established values of his culture."

Like the other Boulting/Sellers films, Heavens Above! satirises contemporary attitudes and cautiously espouses a socialist ethos, while also showing the possible deleterious side-effects of such ideas, and the all-too-human tendency to take advantage of naive generosity.

The film is also notable for its use of profanity, very daring for 1963; Sykes' character at one stage utters the line, "What if it pisses it with rain?".

External links

• Heavens Above! at the Internet Movie Database
• Info and plot summary at Britmovie.co.uk
• Heavens Above! at AllRovi
• British Film Institute
• The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States: Feature Films, 1961-1970, Part 2, page 464.