Heavens Above! (1963)
Directed by John Boulting, Roy Boulting

Film Review

With Heavens Above! the brothers John and Roy Boulting completed a series of successful social satires that have proven to be their most enduring works, their appeal lying less in their actual content and more in what they have to say about post-war British society.  For all their burlesque whimsy and casual reliance on cheap, unsubtle humour, the Boultings' comedies are among the most revealing British films of their era and are, when you examine them closely, surprisingly grim, as they mostly revolve around a woolly-minded idealist who is thwarted lock, stock and barrel from improving the world which he is apparently so eager to change.  Whether it is the legal profession (Brothers in Law, 1957), the education system (Lucky Jim, 1957), worker-employer relations (I'm All Right Jack, 1959) or the religious sphere (Heavens Above!, 1963), human nature and vested interests can always be relied upon to prevent any change to the status quo.  The Boultings liked nothing better than to show us a fleeting glimpse of Utopia then smash it to pieces before our eyes.

Heavens Above! is perhaps the most extreme instance of this.  It is the bleakest of the Boultings' comedies, with a veritable gallery of rogues and hypocrites ranged to defeat the noble aims of a well-meaning but laughably naive vicar.  The film is politically ambiguous but has a slight right-leaning slant as it appears fixated in highlighting the limitations of socialism.  Capitalism may have its faults but it is shown to be a far more viable (indeed fairer) system than a Utopian 'give away' alternative, which is too readily exploited by the greedy and unscrupulous.   The homeless family that lives off state handouts without any awareness of their social obligations provides a crude but salutary reminder of the fundamental flaw in the Welfare State, namely that it can engender a class of irresponsible scroungers and tax dodgers.   Equally contemptible is that larger section of society that is quick to 'grab something for nothing', regardless of the consequences - the same 'jam today' brigade that figured so heavily in Thatcher's Britain of the 1980s, profiting from policies that would ultimately do more social harm than good (the sell-off of council houses and state-owned industries).

Heavens Above! is a grimly prescient film, anticipating many of the social problems that would come to the fore over the following three decades, but it is also a charming comedy featuring a glittering ensemble of Britain's finest character and comedic actors.  As the Reverend Smallwood, Peter Sellers avoids the kind of irksome, shallow caricature he would gravitate towards in later years and turns in a convincing and poignant portrayal of a good man tragically wedded to a fool's errand.  Sellers' performance is by far the most impressive aspect of this film and should be regarded as one of the actor's finest.  The film's extraordinary roll call includes Cecil Parker, Bernard Miles, William Hartnell, Eric Sykes, Irene Handl and Roy Kinnear, Eric Barker and Joan Hickson - a veritable Who's Who of British acting talent that helps to make Heavens Above! one of the Boulting brothers' most memorable and likeable films.

Film Synopsis

It is thanks to a minor clerical error that the Reverend John Smallwood, a naive prison chaplain, is appointed vicar of Orbiston Parva.  Upon his arrival in this backwater English country town, Reverend Smallwood immediately causes ructions, first by making a West Indian dustman his warden, then by inviting a family of homeless benefits scroungers to stay at the vicarage.  Lady Despard, the majority shareholder in a company founded by her husband which is the town's biggest employer, is persuaded by Smallwood to give away her fortune to those who are in much greater need.  To that end, the wealthy widow sells her shares in the company (causing a collapse in the share price that leads to redundancies) and freely gives away the produce from her farm (driving local firms to the wall as their customers desert them).  When Lady Despard's son and heir returns to find his father's company on the brink of ruin he coerces his mother into abandoning her charitable folly.  As Orbiston Parva slides towards anarchy, the church officials mull over what to do with Reverend Smallwood.  If there was ever a time for Divine intervention, this was it...