A Canterbury Tale

Director: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
Screenplay: Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger
Stars: Eric Portman (Thomas Colpeper, JP), Sheila Sim (Alison Smith), Dennis Price (Peter Gibbs), Sergeant John Sweet (Bob Johnson), Esmond Knight (Narrator / Seven-Sisters Soldier / Village Idiot), Charles Hawtrey (Thomas Duckett), Hay Petrie (Woodcock), George Merritt (Ned Horton), Edward Rigby (Jim Horton), Freda Jackson (Prudence Honeywood), Betty Jardine (Fee Baker), Eliot Makeham (Organist), Harvey Golden (Sgt. Roczinsky)
MPAA Rating: NR
Year of Release: 1944
Country: U.K.
A Canterbury Tale: Criterion Collection DVD
A Canterbury TaleWhenever anyone speaks of match cuts, where a filmmaker cuts from one object to another similarly shaped object occupying the same screen space, usually to make some kind of thematic point, the example that always springs to mind first is Stanley Kubrick’s audacious cut from a prehistoric bone-weapon thrown into the air to a spaceship floating through the depths of space in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). In a single cut, Kubrick leaps millions of years forward, yet underscores how nothing has really changed.

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger achieve something similarly powerful and deeply meaningful near the beginning of A Canterbury Tale, their 1944 wartime ode to the beauties of rural England. After a brief prologue that cites directly from Geoffery Chaucer’s medieval classic The Canterbury Tales and shows us idyllic images of the English countryside, we see a group of pilgrims making their way along the “old Canterbury road.” One of them has a hawk that he sends up into the air, where it flies in all its majestic beauty. The film then abruptly match cuts, replacing the hawk with what we quickly recognize as a biplane. We have suddenly jumped forward 600 years into the midst of World War II, where the tranquil hills of Chaucer’s landscape have been overrun by crashing tanks and military exercises.

Yet, despite this jarring leap from soaring hawk to buzzing plane, the central theme of A Canterbury Tale is that not much has changed. Pastoral England still exudes the same charm and mythic pull on the heart in the present as it did in the past. It is crucial that,throughout the film, the tanks and soldiers remain on the outskirts of the ancient hamlet of Chillingbourne, where most of the story’s action takes place. The insanity of the war is not inescapable, but it has done little to affect the rhythms of life, where farmers and woodworkers and blacksmiths and bartenders carry on their trades just as their fathers did and their fathers before them. It is a place in which time has literally stood still.

Nevertheless, it is in the decidedly present tense (the film was made in 1944, near the end of the Great War) that A Canterbury Tale takes place. The story involves three modern “pilgrims”: Alison Smith (Sheila Sim), a young woman from London who has joined the Land Army and has been sent into the country for work; Peter Gibbs (Dennis Price), a British Army sergeant; and Bob Johnson (Srgt. John Sweet), an American Army sergeant on three-day leave. All three of the actors playing the pilgrims were newcomers: Dennis Price had only a handful of credits in television movies; Sheila Sim, although a veteran of the stage, was making her screen debut; and John Sweet was an actual American GI stationed in Britain who was discovered by Michael Powell in a production of Our Town (he never acted in another movie).

Alison, Peter, and Bob find themselves temporarily waylaid in Chillingbourne, a tiny hamlet outside of Canterbury that seems almost untouched by the war. They are immediately brought before the town’s magistrate, Thomas Colpeper (Eric Portman, the film’s only star), a stern man of rigid values who sits in an enormous office with a pleading bar before him and a ducking chair hanging above him. Colpeper represents a form of absolutist morality that is eventually shown to be terribly misguided, yet he remains sympathetic simply because he stands for something.

The narrative in A Canterbury Tale is the very definition of odd because it never seems to be about much of anything at all. Or, rather, it is about several things at once, yet never settles on a central narrative thread. At first, it appears to be a mystery story: the three pilgrims stay in Chillingbourne because they are determined to solve the mystery of the “glue man,” an unknown person who has been pouring glue in the hair of young women late at night, including Alison (the sexual connotations of such an act are inescapable, but not very powerful given the seeming randomness of the crime).

However, the mystery of the “glue man” is only one bit holding the increasingly disassociated chunks of the story together. More important is Powell and Pressburger’s underlying theme about the power and majesty of the countryside and an ancient way of life that even the madness of worldwide war can’t destroy. The three pilgrims end up staying in Chillingbourne not so much because they want to solve the mystery, but because they feel drawn to the location in their very souls. Bob Johnson, the casual, sarcastic American, is the most affected because he has never been to England before and is experiencing its charms firsthand--learning, as it were, what precisely England is fighting for.

And that, ultimately, is what A Canterbury Tale is all about. Produced during the Allied build-up leading to D-Day, it is very much a piece of war propaganda, albeit in a subtle sense. There is little in the way of rah-rah flag waving or overt patriotism. Rather, the film is like an ode to the beauty of England and her traditions, which makes the unstated argument that it is definitely worth defending. A culture and a way of life were at stake, and Powell and Pressburger’s film gently reminds the viewer not only how precious it is, but how fragile. Despite the war raging off-screen, the filmmakers do not shy away from noting its scars, most notably near the end when the pilgrims make it to Canterbury and find much of it bombed out, with signs noting the new locations of shops and other buildings that have been decimated by German bombardment. But, even with that destruction, the fabled cathedral at Canterbury still stands, and each pilgrim finds his or her own blessing there, creating an emotional and spiritual climax that finally brings together what otherwise seems like an eccentric and bizarrely disjointed fable.

A Canterbury Tale Criterion Collection Two-Disc Special Edition DVD

Aspect Ratio1.33:1
AnamorphicNo
AudioEnglish Dolby Digital 1.0 Monaural
Subtitles English
Supplements
  • Audio commentary by film historian Ian Christie
  • Excerpts from the American version of the film, with Kim Hunter
  • New video interview with actress Sheila Sim
  • John Sweet: A Pilgrim’s Return, a documentary about John Sweet by Nick Burton and Eddie McMillan
  • A Canterbury Trail, a new documentary visiting the film locations, by David Thompson
  • Listen to Britain, 2001 video installation piece inspired by A Canterbury Tale, by artist Victor Burgin
  • Listen to Britain, a 1942 documentary by Humphrey Jennings
  • Insert booklet featuring essays by Graham Fuller, Peter von Bagh, and actor John Sweet
  • DistributorThe Criterion Collection
    SRP$39.95
    Release DateJuly 25, 2006

    VIDEO & AUDIO
    The new high-definition transfer of A Canterbury Tale was taken from an original 35mm nitrate fine-grain master. The image is beautifully rendered, with excellent detail and contrast that brings out of the inherent beauty of Powell and Pressburger’s pastoral imagery. The image has a fine palette of grays, and darker scenes are also handled very well (there are quite a few scenes near the beginning that take place in noir-ish inky darkness) The MTI Digital Restoration System has removed virtually all traces of age and wear, although there are still a few, tiny vertical lines from time to time. Unfortunately, this is one of the Academy aspect ratio films that Criterion has windowboxed in order to combat overscan on conventional monitors, a practice many of us hope they will drop permanently. The digitally restored monaural soundtrack, transferred at 24-bit from a 35mm optical track, sounds excellent, with strong fidelity and no ambient hiss.
    SUPPLEMENTS
    Criterion has assembled a generous array of supplements for this two-disc set of A Canterbury Tale. On the first disc, film scholar/historian Ian Christie, who has contributed audio commentaries to a number of Criterion discs, including Powell and Pressburger’s 1945 film I Know Where I’m Going!, delivers a lucid, thoughtful, and well-researched commentary. He approaches the film from aesthetic, historical, and auteurist angles, which makes for an intriguing immersion into the film. Some find Christie’s commentaries too “academic,” but I find them fascinating and informative, and I always appreciate the films more for having listened to them, A Canterbury Tale included. Also on the first disc is an additional prologue and conclusion that were shot for the American version of the film. These scenes, not surprisingly, feature John Sweet’s character and his fiancée (played by Kim Hunter), which shamelessly frames the entire film as his flashback in order to pander to U.S. audiences. The opening prologue also includes an faux-educational animated explanation of wartime England, which is so embarrassingly bad it has to be seen to be believed.

    The second disc opens with a new, 20-minute video interview with actress Sheila Sim, who talks about her experiences working with Powell and Pressburger. John Sweet, who never starred in another movie, appears in John Sweet: A Pilgrim’s Return, a 22-minute documentary by Nick Burton and Eddie McMillan about Sweet’s return to Canterbury in 2001 for a retrospective screening of the film at the Kent International Film Festival. It is primarily a sit-down interview with Sweet, who, now well into his 80s, looks both distinguished and charmingly disheveled. Another documentary, A Canterbury Trail by David Thompson, follows a group of Powell and Pressburger fanatics as they retrace the film’s locations with guides Paul Tritton (a local Kent historian) and Steve Crook (a Powell and Pressburger enthusiast). Running 24 minutes, it is a great opportunity to see the film’s locations circa 2005 and how little many of them have changed. The final supplement on this disc is particularly intriguing: Listen to Britain, a seven-minute video installation piece by artist Victor Burgin done in 2001. Incorporating clips and dialogue from the film along with new footage shot at its locations, it is an interesting ode to England past and present (also included is a written introduction by Burgin, in which he explains how he came to create the piece in response to his return to post-9/11 England after a 13-year absence). Burgin’s piece was also inspired by a 1942 documentary of the same title by Humphrey Jennings, which is also included in its entirety (running 18 minutes, it is a beautiful bit of wartime propaganda; the print used for the transfer is a bit scratchy, but definitely watchable). The insert booklet includes an essay by Interview film columnist Graham Fuller, a tribute by Finnish film historian Peter von Bagh, and an essay by John Sweet about his memories of the film’s production.

    Copyright ©2006 James Kendrick

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    All images copyright © The Criterion Collection

    Overall Rating: (3)




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