moriarty@tc.fluke.com (Jeff Meyer) (12/01/89)
A CANTERBURY TALE
A film review by Jeff Meyer
Copyright 1989 Jeff Meyer
[Seen at the Seattle International Film Festival]
A CANTERBURY TALE (Great Britain, 1944)
Directors/Producers/Screenwriters: The Archers (Michael Powell and
Eric Pressburger)
Cast: Eric Portman, Sheilla Sim, Sgt. John Sweet, Dennis Price, Esmond Knight,
Charles Hawtrey, Hay Petrie
[Part of the TRIBUTE TO MICHAEL POWELL series]
I start this review with some trepidation, because of all of the films
done by The Archers, this may well be my favorite (which is saying something,
considering they also produced, wrote and directed THE LIFE AND DEATH OF
COLONEL BLIMP, A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH, and BLACK NARCISSUS); and the
reasons are difficult to encapsulate into rigid paragraphs. Alright, let's try
the trilogy angle...
If you view Powell & Pressburger's other great wartime movies as
propaganda films (which is sifting some very fine cinema to one particular (and
not especially flattering) element), you could see 49TH PARALLEL as the "Know
Your Enemy" component; it views a group of fugitive Nazis traveling through
Canada, comparing their philosophy and motives against those of Canadians.
[TBRL: To Be Reviewed Later]. THE LIFE AND DEATH OF COLONEL BLIMP was both a
affectionate character sketch (with some wonderful moments) and a pointed slap
about the realities of the Second World War when compared to previous wars
Britain had fought in. [TBRL] A CANTERBURY TALE could almost be considered
the third element, the "Why We Fight" feature; a bit like THE BEST YEARS OF OUR
LIFE, turned sideways and taken before the end of the war, instead of after it.
And it's more subtle than that, too, dealing as much with ideals and traditions
as it does with the personal aspects of the war.
The film opens with a brief recreation of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrimage
on the Pilgrim's Way, segueing into wartime England via a hunting falcon which
becomes a diving Spitfire. Three people have come to a small village on the
Pilgrim's Way. One (Sheila Sim) is a city-raised Woman's Corps farm worker,
taking the place of local farm workers who have been enlisted into the Armed
Forces. Her fiancee, a pilot, was lost in action several months earlier; the
idyllic Canterbury countryside, seemingly isolated from the war despite
blackouts and the occasional war game, begins to restore her interest in life
after the loss of her lover. A second (Dennis Price) is a musician, a
university-trained organist who found himself working in movie-houses before
war broke out. He is somewhat bitter about where his life has brought him, and
cynical about the war and its eventual effects on England. The last is an
American private (John Sweet) from Oregon, on a week's leave to visit
Canterbury and the Pilgrim's Way, not to mention getting his mind off an
absence of letters from his girlfriend. The three meet on a train, and become
involved in a local mystery, a prankster called the Glue Man who pours glue in
women's hair. Interested in the stories of the Pilgrim's Way as related by a
local squire (Eric Portman), they travel around the country surrounding
Canterbury, ostentatiously to discover the identity of the Glue Man, but
ultimately to lose themselves in the history and beauty of the area. They
finally become companions on a weekend trip to the Great Cathedral of
Canterbury; at the end of their pilgrimage, they are given an opportunity to
see their lives in perspective to their hopes, and to their fellow pilgrims, in
this and previous eras.
Spiritual messages rarely come off well in film; they're either laid on
with heavy-handed imagery, or are so ephemeral that they get lost under the
tread of the rest of the film. A CANTERBURY TALE avoids this nimbly; it
appears to be uncovering its message in the beautiful footage of the
countryside and its people, rather than implying it. Powell grew up in this
area, and he uses the images of his childhood to infer much of what he loves
best about his country. If Olivier's HENRY V was a (belated) battle cry to
spur the British to war, then conversely A CANTERBURY TALE is something of a
visual encapsulation of Shakespeare's "This England" speech from RICHARD II.
One might think of A CANTERBURY TALE as a reminder of one the better
aspects of civilization, the quest for knowledge and self-awareness, made in an
era when these things seemed eclipsed by the threats of invasion and fascism.
It is subtle when compared with most Home Front movies of the time (Halliwell,
usually a great fan of The Archers in general, seems confused by what they were
shooting for in this film), and indeed, perhaps it has found a resonant chord
with this reviewer which will not be commonly repeated. But personally, it is
a special film, both in the perspective of a wartime picture, and in its calm
reflective nature within the eye of the hurricane. It certainly rates with the
best The Archers produced; perhaps this newly-restored full-length print of the
film will be made available to video companies in the near future.
Moriarty, aka Jeff Meyer
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