Lately, empathy has been in alarming decline in the U.S., most tellingly by some outspoken alleged Christians. I will concede one can only extend themselves to help others, and that the difference between a hand-out and a hand-up is always a grey area.
Peter Sellers plays an idealistic and optimistic vicar in 1963’s Heavens Above!. His is a very likable character, though generous to a fault. It is bad enough a large family of schemers will take advantage of him to the extent they will eventually steal the lead roof off the church. He has also infuriated the local business owners when the food bank he starts undercuts their operations. Then there’s the factory which is the town’s main industry, as its stock suffers because of his influence upon the populace to depend on the Lord instead of medications. The end result is mass layoffs.
He is generous and trusting to a fault when we first see him in this picture, where he is working as a prison chaplain. The warden and guards will be glad to see the back of him. It is supposed to be Sellers’s back the warden sees getting into a cab to leave, but it is actually prisoner Roy Kinnear in clothes he store from the chaplain. The guards find the priest bound and gagged in his underwear in Kinnear’s cell. This was the prisoner Sellers had recommended to be a trustee, telling the warden, “To be trustworthy, a man has to be trusted.” Obviously, trust should have its limits.
Archbishop Cecil Parker has chosen a man named John Smallwood to be the new vicar of Orbiston Parva. What he doesn’t realize if there are two Smallwoods, and that sounded worse than I thought that would. Somebody in his office grabs from the filing cabinet the card for the one played by Sellers instead of the “other Smallwood”, who is Ian Carmichael. Believing the job is done, Parker goes on vacation.
So, nobody is there to see Sellers get off the train. A kind trashman played by Brock Peters gives the priest a ride to his new parish. Next door is William Hartnell, cast as the vicar’s warden (which appears to be a role similar to that of a deacon), a few years away from becoming the first Doctor Who. Among the changes Sellers will make which will chafe Hartnell is replacing him with the affable Brock. While I am sure Hartnell was displeased to have been replaced by anybody, I suspect he was twice as appalled having a Black man be his substitute. Nothing is said, but some suppressed racism among the townfolk will surface later.
Somebody even more important in the village is Isabel Jeans, the widow of the founder of the company that makes Tranquilax, a popular pill that claims to be the “3-in-1 restorative”, inexplicably being a laxative, sedative and stimulant. Their ad copy reads, “Life not worth living? Why suffer?” Jesus, does it actually kill the consumer? As I alluded to before, sales of this obviously worthless good will plummet partly because Sellers encourages people to forego use of it, changing their “3-in-1” to be the father, son and Holy Ghost.
Another hit to the company is the free food distribution I also mentioned earlier, as he convinces Jeans to use her money to benefit the less fortunate. Reading her Bible, she finds the inspiration to sell all her stock in the firm, which causes a panic. I think it would be interesting if she had instead tried to find wisdom in one of the many weird and alarming passages of the text, such as when Lot offers his daughters to the Sodomites. Instead, the girls get him drunk and have sex with him while he’s passed out. No kidding, folks, it is Genesis chapter 19.
Alas, even the food distribution effort is a fail, with people of every economic and social class taking advantage of it. Posters advertising the giveaway state the purpose as being “rediscover the Christian joy of giving”. Instead, it end up being more about the greediness of the receiving. And the beggars will be choosers: “my husband said those tomatoes you gave me yesterday were too squishy.” At one point, Sellers is being interviewed for TV, saying, “Goodwill always breeds goodwill.” In the meantime, a fight is breaking out among the “customers” inside the facility.
Another plot thread concerns Eric Sykes, Irene Handl and a wildly varying number of kids who take up residence in the priory, at Seller’s invitation. This bunch had previously been squatting in a field adjacent to the Tranquilax facility, and the owner of that had been struggling to evict them so it can expand its facilities. Hartnell, who lives next door to the vicarage says of the family after they’re booted out of the field, “that lot is someone else’s worry now”, just as the whole caravan comes to the parish house to settle in.
This is a deeply funny film, even if some jokes are too obvious and some land more successfully than others. A gently mocking tone is there from even before the opening credits, as a narrator (also Sellers) tells us how “it’s a Sunday evening and the townfolk are engaged in their customary devotions.” There’s a cut to TV aerials, bingo halls, a couple dancing next to a jukebox, a movie theater showing From Here to Eternity.
Needless to say, the church is the target of many satirical jabs. Kenneth Griffith doesn’t get enough screentime as the town’s Pentecostal preacher, who says the Church of England has neglected to put the fear of eternal torment into people, that “it is only the fires of Hell that keeps the churches warm.” I also liked many of Parker’s lines, such as when he tells Sellers, “I don’t think there’s any reason to keep bringing God into this.” There’s even minor bits such as the kid working the bellows of the church’s pump organ while reading Lolita, an interesting Easter Egg, as Sellers had starred in the Kubrick film of the same just the year before. Then there’s this interesting line, which is out of the blue, and which seems to foretell certain scandals which would shake up the church a few decades later, as a priest says on the phone, “Dear, oh, dear, I wish the Boy Scout movement had never been thought of.”
Perhaps my favorite scene has Carmichael as (according to the credits) “The Other Smallwood” getting grilled by psychiatrist Miles Malleson, who thinks he’s examining Sellers. It is a brutally funny scene of misunderstanding, with Malleson’s increasing alarm over the innocent response of Carmichael, a man who looks like he was a model for a character out of Wallace and Gromit. I also liked how Sellers reacts to the news he was the wrong man: “I never thought of myself as a clerical error before.” And what justification does Parker have for arranging for the psych exam of Sellers? “His air of unjustifiable happiness.”
Unfortunately, the movie is roughly a half-hour too long, as it runs to two hours. Even the structure feels strained, with that final half-hour feeling like an unexpected fourth act. Admittedly, this is where the film was inevitably headed, as it needs to fulfil the title by making Sellers the first bishop of outer space. This culminates in a gag which, while completely unbelievable, making a neat circle by rhyming with the early scene of Kinnear’s attempted prison break. In a strange way, Sellers’s character, who had already fallen upwards to be vicar of Orbison Parva, falls further upward than anybody in the church had ever done.
The cast is fascinating, even those in minor roles. British comedy staple Miriam Karlin is the sister Handl, and I guess some of the gaggle of kids are hers. I always like seeing Karlin in films, and she especially left an impression on me in Ladies Who Do. One of those kids is Steve Marriott, soon to be the guitarist and lead singer of The Small Faces. Of particular note is Bernard Miles as James’s butler. He is callous and surly, and his shocking dismissal of Sellers in his final scene has him quoting scripture: “Matthew 27:5: ‘And he went and he hanged himself’ and Luke 10:27: ‘Go and do thou likewise’.”
But Heavens Above! is entirely a showcase for Sellers and yet another demonstration of his chameleon-like ability to slip completely into a role. I liked this character who is a bit sanctimonious, and has always has good, but misguided, intentions. In the end, I was wondering, is he secretly Bono?
Dir: John Boulting and Roy Boulting
Starring Peter Sellers, Cecil Parker, Isabel Jeans
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray