HEAVENS ABOVE, 1963

Considered a satirical masterpiece, and ahead of its time, the plot features Peter Sellers as a humble, caring vicar accidentally assigned to a comfortable, snobbish English country village in place of an upper-class cleric with the same name. The black and white picture quality is iridescent, like sand sculpture sprayed silver. The credits, showing the town, convey a feeling for the emerging and exciting pop-art aesthetic of the time. Sellers’ cockney accent and disregard for upper-class norms, as well as his prominent, slightly hooked nose, reminds me of John Lennon, who was ascending with the Beatles during that period. In this immaculately crafted, low budget film, Sellers influences the town’s dowager and chief business scion to give her riches to the poor. But all does not go well. One of her memorable quotes: “There’s a conspiracy to prevent one doing good.” The bewildered archdeacon is amusing, too, as he talks of Sellers’ child-like directness and “quite unjustifiable happiness.” There is outstanding truth of types. The gypsies that the vicar takes in are parasites, but are shown in the round, not as stereotypes. Brock Peters plays the genial West Indian immigrant and garbage collector selected by Sellers to be the vicar’s assistant, causing many to display the racial attitudes of the time.