Heavens Above! (1963)

Good movie but grossly overrated

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Ian Carmichael with vicar's teeth, and the angelic Irene Handl as wife of dead-beat Eric Sykes in one of his rare, prominent movie roles (see him excel in 'The Liquidator' 1965), accompanied by 'sixties British character actors arranged randomly, as if in a box of top-notch chocolates you just can't wait to eat! Peter Sellers underplays Reverend Smallwood, in what can be seen as a biting satire on the then attitudes of comfortable 'Christian' middle-class villagers, towards those less fortunate. A gypsy family is evicted from the field owned by bastard landowner William Hartnell, and 'mistaken identity' vicar Sellers takes them in, showing true humanitarian action. Simultaneously, Lady of the Manor, majority shareholder in the company which keeps the village afloat, decides to buy her way into heaven by selling her shares to feed the locals for free. And such locals! I spotted Cardew Robinson, Joan Hickson and Miriam Karlin, and anyone who thought Chris Barrie was good but miscast as butler to Lara Croft in Tomb Raider would have seen the real McCoy in Bernard Miles, the only thing missing was the identifying fart.This was, I remember, hilarious when released, but has undeniably dated. It is now most useful as a beautiful memento of the lost world that was mid-20thcentury England. Peter Sellers eating the dog's biscuits has been done a few times since, I am sure, but never bettered.The Boulting Brothers had bigger hits which are shown more frequently: 'Carlton Browne of the F.O.', 'The Family Way' etc., and this, though a good film, is not a classic. The most grating aspect, regrettably quite common in the sixties, is the dubbing with female' voices of all the kids, male and female. Call to mind that awful advertisement for insurance with the six month old child speaking like Brian Sewell. Perhaps the real voices were too regional or uncultured and the netball team just happened to be standing close-by?The world was black and white in those days, not just the movies, and though we have lost a lot along the way, we have occasionally gained a depth which early British comedy rarely achieved. Elstree movies were finished by then, - the New Wave had not arrived, and 'Heavens Above', while worthy and amusing, is little more than one of the richly decorated connecting links between these two interesting eras of movie-making.

Owing to a clerical error, John Smallwood, a prison padre and good-natured believer in goodwill to all men, is appointed vicar of the conservative village of Orbiston Parva. Soon his wild ideas about being nice to people and offering charity to the poor begin to cause both commercial and political ructions ...This is a lovely gentle satire on both the lapsed, self-serving attitude of middle England towards Christianity and the tenuous position of the torporific Church in the face of consumer culture. Sellers is excellent as Smallwood, whose simple faith in the merits of Christ's teachings - self-sacrifice, forgiveness, penitence - are at odds with a community which is too busy to go to Sunday Service, likes to evict layabouts and wants to build factories to attract business. Boulting and Frank Harvey's script is excellent, making its points subtly and effectively through character, but also with some witty gags (a train guard addresses a compartment full of clerics, saying, "Last supper, gentlemen."). The large cast all acquit themselves well, especially Sykes and Handl as a pair of spongers with an indeterminate number of children, Peters as a dustman-turned-church-warden, Miles as a quietly ruthless butler, and a very young Kinnear as an ex-convict. This is the film for those people who consider themselves religious and think the Church is a wonderful institution, but don't actually feel they need to go.

This film is great fun, well written and well acted. While the ending is unexpected, if you haven't seen it before, it is difficult to know how all the issues could've been resolved in any other way except as unresolved as it is here! They did the same thing to John Steed in the very last episode of The Avengers, appropriately titled "Bizarre", some six years later! That episode featured Roy Kinnear as the marvellously named Bagpipes Happychap who also features here amongst a wealth of famous faces including the original Doctor Who, William Hartnell, in the year that he took that role. Again, considering the ending, that too seems appropriate now and brought a wry smile to this viewer's face especially as another of the film's cast, Mark Eden, also appeared, in the title role of "Marco Polo", opposite Hartnell in that series!!! Peter Sellars is on fine form as the hopelessly idealistic new vicar as is Eric Sykes as a chain smoking butcher! Best of all is the plethora of verbal and visual irony which should be enough to keep any discerning viewer entertained!!!

Peter Sellers is great as the Brummie vicar whose gaucheness brings a small country town to its knees in this famous 60s satire. It's difficult to pin down the film's target; perhaps the film's so likeable because it seems to get a dig in at everybody at the same time. Among the targets are: religion, capitalism, communism, and British society and mores. The moral of the tale seems to be that no matter your efforts or intentions, you're unlikely to improve on the status quo (and could make things a lot worse). So in the last analysis maybe it's Conservative propaganda.The film stomps merrily through all the issues with fun effect and should've quit when it was ahead. The final segment is crass and takes off some of the shine.