Great Britain

Apart from the Church of England, which it sanitizes with affectionate glee, the main foundation of this 1963 Boulting Brothers comedy is Peter Sellers. He plays a vicar whose simple faith is as securely and unpretentiously anchored to him as his bicycle clips. Transferred by a clerical error from a prison chaplaincy to a country parish, he tries to spread the Word a bit too literally and discovers people are happiest when religion preaches what they practise. He incurs disapproval right away by making Negro dustman (Brock Peters) into his church-warden. Then he charitably offers refuge at the vicarage to a pair of villainous squatters (Eric Sykes, Miriam Karlin) and their prolific and unholy brood. Next he persuades the wealthy lady of the manor (Isabel Jeans), who's worried about threading her way through the needle's eye, to distribute her bounty - and so the church is filled as never before with worshippers who bring shopping baskets to partake of the good-time religion. The film has a zestful cast of comic characters to add their own professionalism to the sometimes facile view of religion and to ensure that at any rate the laughs are not found wanting. There is Ian Carmichael as a curate; Malcolm Muggeridge flitting by as an archdeacon and looking like a sheep in shepherd's clothing; and Cecil Parker as another prelate, nicely named Aspinall. But it is the late Peter Sellers whose genius is stretched by the character he creates, at once human being and caricature, with scrubby hair-style, a Birmingham accent and a smile described by one Churchman as 'quite unjustifiably happy.' Pressing on the white notes of the part, Sellers brings vividly and affectionately to life a man whose propagation of his Faith turns out to be more enjoyable and affecting than the film perhaps intended. In the end, it doesn't give offence - as some high-placed prelates feared it would at the time - so much as purge one of cant. ALEXANDER WALKER