The Missionary is a 1982 British comedy film directed by Richard Loncraine, produced by George Harrison, Denis O'Brian, Michael Palin (also the film's writer and co-producer) and Neville C. Thompson. The film stars Palin as the Rev. Charles Fortescue, Denholm Elliott as The Bishop of London, Michael Hordern as the butler and Maggie Smith as Isabel, Lady Ames.
Fortescue is a missionary returning from Africa after a ten year religious mission to wed his sweetheart who refuses to be touched, and because he has a new assignment. His new assignment is to minister to the prostitutes of London. Lady Ames is to fund the new assignment, but only on the condition that Reverend Fortescue share her bed.
Read more about The Missionary: Cast
Famous quotes containing the word missionary:
“The missionary is no longer a man, a conscience. He is a corpse, in the hands of a confraternity, without family, without love, without any of the sentiments that are dear to us.... Emasculated, in a sense, by his vow of chastity, he offers us the distressing spectacle of a man deformed and impotent or engaged in a stupid and useless struggle with the sacred needs of the flesh, a struggle which, seven times out of ten, leads him to sodomy, the gallows, or prison.”
—Paul Gauguin (1848–1903)