Movie satires are tricky things. Sometimes the medicine is too strong and they get banned or shamed — see Life of Brian and Man Bites Dog. Sometimes they flop, such as Terry Gilliam’s Brazil or Mike Judge’s Idiocracy. Occasionally they just need a little space, as is the case with this humdinger starring Peter Sellers. Time has been kind to the Boulting brothers’ savage religious satire. Few people could stomach it on release, with The Times describing it as “a serious film comedy gone wrong”.

And it is serious, for its subject is the impossibility of Christian living in a world gone mad. Sellers plays one of his most impressively muted and winningly sweet characters, the Rev John Smallwood. He’s a Brummie vicar and committed socialist who is accidentally sequestered to the odious Surrey parish of Orbiston Parva. There, money-grabbing Little Englanders, venal snobs and working-class layabouts are essentially governed by the Despard family, evil owners of a pharmaceuticals company that makes “Tranquilax” — a combined sedative, stimulant and laxative.

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Smallwood’s ideals of earthly asceticism somehow appeal to the lonely Lady Despard (a fabulous Isabel Jeans), who initiates a monstrous charity giveaway of local produce and possessions that torpedoes the town’s commercial ecosystem and reveals the intense greed that motivates all citizens.

No, it’s not a laugh riot, but it’s brilliantly persistent in its line of attack. The script from Frank Harvey (I’m All Right Jack) has some beautiful zingers, including one, expertly delivered by Cecil Parker’s slimy archdeacon, that is very Triangle of Sadness: “And lying there on the deck of Lord Butler’s yacht, with the sun pouring down on my naked body, I suddenly realised how much easier it is for the rich to lead that truly simple life that our Lord advocated.”
★★★★☆
PG, 114min
Blu-ray and digital. In Character: The Films of Peter Sellers, BFI Southbank, London SE1, to Aug 30

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