Post by petrolino on Oct 21, 2017 0:39:57 GMT
'A Canterbury Tale' is a provincial fantasy with satirical elements, set during World War 2, that's inspired by the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, a poet from the Middle Ages whose bawdy visions have been called "quintessentially English". It tells the tale of three pilgrims who investigate a crime on their way to Canterbury. They encounter the home guard and assorted oddballs stationed in the south of England while exploring the identity of a phantom flinger who covers womens' hair in something sticky under the cloak of darkness. The three in question are traveling shop assistant Alison Smith (Sheila Sim), English army conscript Sergeant Peter Gibbs (Dennis Price) and American soldier Sergeant Bob Johnson (Sergeant John Sweet), ASN 31036062, who hails from Three Sisters Falls, Oregon.
'A Canterbury Tale' can be viewed as an intensely personal work from director Michael Powell and his production partner Emeric Pressburger. Powell was born in the village Bekesbourne in Kent and he attended The King's School in the historic city of Canterbury. There are scenes with soldiers, scenes with local children supporting the war effort, and scenes focused upon Alison who becomes a farm labourer. We see Alison working the farm, picking the fruits, baling the hay and tending to the animals. Powell revels in photographing his home county but does so through the expressionist eye of German cinematographer Erwin Hillier. The story shows how young women were sometimes dictated to by old men during wartime until said men realised they needed these women to do the jobs they wouldn't or couldn't.
We get to know the people on their pilgrimage. Alison is in search of her missing boyfriend, a pilot who's been shot down behind enemy lines. Sergeant Gibbs likes to laugh and joke but he's missing his organ. Sergeant Johnson is homesick but optimistic and rarely doleful. They look for clues in Salisbury on their way to Canterbury. Hitching a ride are Eric Portman as Christian magistrate Thomas Colpeper and legendary Charles Hawtrey as alert stationmaster Thomas Duckett.
Burgess Meredith worked as an uncredited script consultant having been initially considered for the role of the American soldier. Sergeant Sweet was paid $2,000 for working on 'A Canterbury Tale'. It was reported by the local press in Granville, Ohio, where Sweet lived for a significant part of his life having moved there at the age of 10, that he donated his wage to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Sweet returned to teaching when an acting career didn't work out for him. The folks of Granville expressed affection and gratitude for his contributions to society. Sweet never forget his home was Minneapolis, Minnesota and he never forgot his second home was Granville, Ohio.
"Seventy years ago, Michael Powell’s bucolic wartime caper A Canterbury Tale was called "silly". Thanks to Martin Scorsese, it's now a classic. A Canterbury Tale had grown organically in our minds,” wrote Michael Powell in his memoirs, “but it was not understood, or even enjoyed, until some 30-odd years later.” When the enigmatic film director and his partner Emeric Pressburger – together known as The Archers – released their ethereal detective story about wartime “pilgrims”, audiences were bemused. Now, 70 years later, A Canterbury Tale is considered a classic of British cinema, but the road to its redemption was long. The film is, in part, a cinematic ode to the fields and folklore of Powell’s childhood home: the wheelwrights and blacksmiths, the twists and turns on the pilgrims’ way. Powell was born in 1905 at Howletts Farm, Bekesbourne, and went to the King’s School in Canterbury during the First World War. “Frankly, the film is about Michael’s love of his birthplace and all that he felt about England,” says Thelma Schoonmaker, Powell’s widow. “There is so much about him that is laid down in the film, even his love of scything his grass instead of using a mower.” Speaking from New York, Schoonmaker has a professional as well as a personal interest – she is Martin Scorsese’s long-time editor and the winner of three Oscars.”
- Christian House, The Telegraph
- Christian House, The Telegraph
"One swallow does not a summer make, as Aristotle is said to have said. But, in A Canterbury Tale, all it takes is one bird and the magic of an edit for Powell & Pressburger to propel us centuries forward in time, from the film’s opening among Chaucer’s medieval pilgrims to an August afternoon in 1943. In a history-compressing jump cut copied by Stanley Kubrick for 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the falcon is instantaneously replaced by a plane flying over the Kent countryside and we find ourselves transported – not only to the dog days of a wartime summer, but also into the midst of one of the strangest and most wonderful films ever made on these fair isles. Three modern-day pilgrims (a British and an American sergeant, and a land girl) arrive off the train in the fictional village of Chillingbourne. The American had disembarked too early (he thought he was already in Canterbury), but is persuaded to stay a while to help unmask a mysterious assailant who pours glue into the hair of local women. What ensues is not a thriller but an idiosyncratic meditation on faith, national identity and the mystical undercurrents of the English landscape."
- Samuel Wigley, The British Film Institute
A Canterbury Tale
'Soul Soldier' - Throwing Muses
“I first watched A Canterbury Tale with my father, nearly 20 years ago. He warned me that while he liked it, most people did not. It was too flawed, too rum, it didn't hang together. So we sat in the lounge and saw the hawk turn into the fighter plane and the trainload of pilgrims pull into Kent and the first, scurrying escape of the "glue-man", who pours adhesive into the hair of the girls who date the soldiers – and about half an hour in, my dad hit the pause button and asked if I maybe wanted to watch something else instead. "No, it's OK, I like it," I muttered, because it's always easier to say that we like things as opposed to what I really wanted to say, which was that I loved it, that I was choked by it and that, in that moment, I had no desire to watch anything else, ever again. And that would he please, for the love of God, hit the play button right now – now! – and then leave the remote control alone for the rest of the picture. I revisited A Canterbury Tale again a few months back and was relieved to find it just as magical as ever. This ensures that it has briefly shuffled to the top of a stack of my other "favourite films" (there are about 20 or 30 of them; it's not the most exclusive club), though I still hesitate to shove it to the fore, because it's a thing of such fragile, broken glory, like some tubercular saint, that I hate the thought of people laughing at it. Even its director, Michael Powell, wasn't especially fond of A Canterbury Tale. He felt that Emeric Pressburger's script was at fault and that this dragged the film off course, whereas I'd argue that the cracks are what give it that crucial layer of strangeness and that the rambling detours lead to the richest, wildest rabbit-holes of all. It was shot in 1943, in Powell's home county, during the dog days of the second world war and charts the fortunes of three modern-day pilgrims (land girl, British soldier, US sergeant) en-route to Canterbury but waylaid for a few days in the neighbouring village of Chillingbourne.”
- Xan Brooks, The Guardian
- Xan Brooks, The Guardian
"While nominally of a piece in its aims and setting with their other wartime propaganda pictures, “A Canterbury Tale” is a wildly different kind of picture. In fact, it’s wildly different from almost anything ever made; a gloriously original, unclassifiable piece of work that marks the duo’s second masterpiece in a row."
- Oliver Lyttelton, 'The Films Of Powell & Pressburger : A Retrospective'
The Boy With Yellow Hair
'Bright Yellow Gun' - Throwing Muses
We get to know the people on their pilgrimage. Alison is in search of her missing boyfriend, a pilot who's been shot down behind enemy lines. Sergeant Gibbs likes to laugh and joke but he's missing his organ. Sergeant Johnson is homesick but optimistic and rarely doleful. They look for clues in Salisbury on their way to Canterbury. Hitching a ride are Eric Portman as Christian magistrate Thomas Colpeper and legendary Charles Hawtrey as alert stationmaster Thomas Duckett.
"The few months I spent making the film were the most profound and influential of my life."
- Sergeant John Sweet
- Sergeant John Sweet
Burgess Meredith worked as an uncredited script consultant having been initially considered for the role of the American soldier. Sergeant Sweet was paid $2,000 for working on 'A Canterbury Tale'. It was reported by the local press in Granville, Ohio, where Sweet lived for a significant part of his life having moved there at the age of 10, that he donated his wage to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Sweet returned to teaching when an acting career didn't work out for him. The folks of Granville expressed affection and gratitude for his contributions to society. Sweet never forget his home was Minneapolis, Minnesota and he never forgot his second home was Granville, Ohio.
"What wouldn't I give to grow old in a place like that."
