“A CLERICAL ERROR”

By Raymond Benson

The Boulting Brothers (John and Roy) were a British filmmaking team (and identical twins!) active primarily in the 1940s and 50s. They mostly made acerbic satirical comedies, often with a social issue stance. They directed a handful of titles together, but usually either John or Roy would direct (Roy did the most), they both produced, and one or the other would contribute to the screenplays. Having formed their own production company, Charter Film Productions, in 1937, the brothers enjoyed a great deal of creative freedom and, at times, considerable success. Their films were not for everyone, but occasionally they made a classic.

Heavens Above! is a later period picture (1963) in which Peter Sellers stars as a vicar assigned to a small village. Other British character actors appear throughout, including Cecil Parker, Isabel Jeans, Eric Sykes, Miriam Karlin, Bernard Miles, Ian Carmichael, Irene Handl, Roy Kinnear, Miles Malleson, Kenneth Griffith, and others. African-American actor Brock Peters also has a strong supporting role and, given the setting and the rest of the all-white cast, he stands out a bit… on purpose.

Sellers is Reverend John Smallwood, a rather naïve but extremely sincere and pious prison chaplain. An administrative mistake (“I never thought of myself as a clerical error,” he would later say) sends him to be the vicar of the town of Orbiston Parva, when in fact a different Reverend John Smallwood (Carmichael) was supposed to have been given the job. The town is mostly supported (and run) by the wealthy Despard family, whose drug factory makes Tranquilax, a combination sedative, pain killer, and laxative. Money is what makes the town go ‘round, despite the presence of a rather large family of squatters, the Smiths, on land meant for company expansion. Sellers’ Smallwood immediately begins to chastise the town’s citizens for caring too much about money and citing Biblical passages to back up his sermons. At first the citizens are outraged by this upstart vicar telling them how to behave. When he hires a Black dustman (Peters) to be his church warden and then allows the Smiths—with all their many children—to live at the parish, things really get out of hand. But then Smallwood charms the Despard matriarch (Jeans) who decides to become charitable—an act that sends the company stock and sales plummeting. The citizens soon follow her lead and do the same. Suddenly, the commercial businesses of the town start failing, too… and an uprising against Smallwood begins. The archdeacon (Parker) and the bishop realize that a mistake has been made and then go about attempting to correct it.

The movie is indeed a sardonic and rather dark comedy about religion, politics, and charity versus capitalism. There is a lot being said in the film, much of which may make some of the more devout viewers uncomfortable. The others will be laughing aloud.

Sellers is surprisingly subdued here. He keeps his calm throughout, portraying a compassionate “good” man who is almost a foreshadowing of his Chauncey Gardiner in Being There (1979). He carries the picture with aplomb and confidence, a movie made just prior to his shot to international stardom in The Pink Panther (also 1963). Others, including Peters, Parker, Jeans, Kinnear, Malleson, Carmichael, and the adult Smiths (Sykes, Karlin, Handl) are all terrific and very funny.

Written by Frank Harvey and John Boulting, Heavens Above! is possibly one of the Boulting Brothers’ better pictures, although it feels a little too long—it could have perhaps lost a good twenty minutes and been just as effective.

Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray release looks wonderful (the transfer is from StudioCanal) and comes with an audio commentary featuring authors and comedy historians Gemma and Robert Ross. The theatrical trailer and other Kino comedy trailers round out the package.

Heavens Above! is for fans of Peter Sellers, the Boulting Brothers, and British comedies of the 1960s.

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