Heavens Above!

Heavens Above!
Directed by	John Boulting Roy Boulting
Written by	Frank Harvey
Produced by	John Boulting Roy Boulting
Starring	Peter Sellers Cecil Parker Isabel Jeans Eric Sykes Bernard Miles Ian Carmichael Irene Handl Roy Kinnear Miriam Karlin Brock Peters
Cinematography	Mutz Greenbaum
Edited by	Teddy Darvas
Music by	Richard Rodney Bennett
Production companies	Charter Film Productions Romulus Films
Distributed by	British Lion Films (UK)
Release date	23 May 1963 (1963-05-23) (UK)
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 a similar vein to the earlier collaboration between Sellers, Harvey and the Boultings, I'm All Right Jack.

Plot

A naive but caring prison chaplain, John Smallwood (Sellers), is accidentally assigned as vicar to the small and prosperous English country town of Orbiston Parva, in place of an upper-class cleric (Carmichael) with the same name, who is favoured by the Despard family, who practically run the town and operate a large factory there.

Smallwood's belief in charity and forgiveness sets him at odds with the locals, whose assertions that they are good, Christian people are belied in Smallwood's eyes by their behaviour and ideas. He creates social ructions by appointing a black dustman (Peters) as his churchwarden, taking in a gypsy family, and persuading local landowner Lady Despard (Jeans) to provide food for the church to distribute free to the people of the town.

His scheme spirals out of control and very soon the local traders are up in arms as they have lost all their customers. He tries to explain this to the residents but is besieged in the church hall and only just rescued by the police.

As a face-saving act, the Bishop appoints the 'original' Smallwood to the parish and assigns the 'troublemaker' to the Scottish island of 'Ultima Thule'. He is made 'Bishop of Outer Space' to the British space operations based there. But when the intended pilot of the first rocket gets cold feet, Smallwood takes his place. He is last heard broadcasting a sermon over the rocket's radio.

Main cast

• Peter Sellers as the Reverend John Edward Smallwood
• Cecil Parker as Archdeacon Aspinall
• Isabel Jeans as Lady Lucy 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
• Josephine Woodford as Doris 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 Thomas
• Mark Eden as Sir Geoffrey Despard
• John Comer as Butcher
• Basil Dignam as Prison Governor
• Franklin Engelmann as TV Commentator
• Colin Gordon as Prime Minister
• Geoffrey Hibbert as Council Official
• Joan Heal as Disgruntled Housewife
• Ludovic Kennedy as Himself
• Margery Lawrence as Quarrelling Housewife
• Harry Locke as Shop Steward
• Henry Longhurst as Deaf Man
• Malcolm Muggeridge as Cleric
• Derek Nimmo as Director-Generals Assistant
• Conrad Phillips as P.R.O.
• Nicholas Phipps as Director-General
• Cardew Robinson as Tramp
• Gerald Sim as Store Manager
• Olive Sloane as Housewife
• Marianne Stone as Miss Palmer
• Elsie Wagstaff Lady on Parish Council
• Thorley Walters as Tranquilax Executive
• Ian Wilson as Salvation Army Major
• George Woodbridge as Bishop
• Drewe Henley as Doris's Boy Friend (uncredited)
• Ed Devereaux as Communication Officer (uncredited)

The cast includes several uncredited performers: A Hard Day's Night actor John Junkin, Rodney Bewes, who has a couple of lines as a milkman, and future Small Faces and Humble Pie singer Steve Marriott. Sellers's performance is generally held to be outstanding, in a meatier, more dramatic role, similar to his work in I'm All Right Jack, released in 1959.

Reception

The film premiered in London on 23 May 1963 at the Columbia Cinema in Shaftesbury Avenue (today known as Curzon Soho), and although it disappointed the critic for The Times, who found it lacking the mild bite and satire of the Boulting-Sellers film I'm All Right Jack, it became one of the 12 most popular films in Britain in 1963.

Analysis

An article in Garden History likened the character of the Reverend John Smallwood to that of an 18th century picturesque guru William Gilpin: "The first act of the new reverend is to invite a group of colourful travellers 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 Britain'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 other Boulting films, Heavens Above! satirises contemporary materialistic 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.

External links

• Heavens Above! at the BFI's Screenonline
• Heavens Above! at IMDb
• Heavens Above! at AllMovie
• Heavens Above! at the TCM Movie Database