deckard

"A Canterbury Tale" is one of my favourite films,every time I watch it I see something different:a new idea or theory comes to mind about what the main premise is and what the characters are doing within that.Now,no doubt leaving myself open to a lot of redress,I have a(latest) theory,so here goes:Three people meet at a train station,is this chance or is it pre-ordained?Would they have become friends if it were not for the glue man?So,as the film progresses,we discover a(so-called)potty J.P.-Colpepper,but is he?Could it not be that Colpepper isn't potty after all but an,shall we say,ethereal type being?Angelic,for want of a better word.OK let's backpeddle a tad,the three friends all have some sadness in their lives and need fulfillment,how do they know they can find it at Canterbury?Perhaps they needed guidance to get there?Notice that they all see Colpepper at important moments,so he can influence them in some way and he(Colpepper)always turns up to "watch over"them.Then, in the final moments he's there to make sure his work is done.I have no idea if this notion has been talked about before,if it has please let me know,it just came to mind as I watched it recently.
Well there we are,yes I know the theory is simple,overly romantic and the film has many more complexities,but why not?The film after all is full of fancy and silliness,so romanticism is part of that,surely.It's just an idea along with the many that surround this slice of poetic wonder from the sweetest cake which is British film.

"and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock"

Yvonne

I'd never even heard of this film until this forum. It sounds a bit like "It's a Wonderful Life", so I hope it's not as disappointing as that film when I get a copy. I shall try to do that straight away, so would you please, please try not to reveal too much of the plot when you reply? clown

Yvonne

Gibbie

A Canterbury Tale is a modern (1940s) Chaucer. It was a tragic time in British history when this movie was made (1944) and P&P set a movie that embraces the best of a national memory, which goes beyond the power factors that people rankle about today and which was slipping away back then (in this way it is a positive side of the coin to Col. Blimp).

Chris Wicking, in his review of the film, from 44, says it better than I can, wrote:

"... the scenes detailing the trio's investigation are less about that investigation than about their relationships with each other, their seemingly lost loves (human and spiritual), the countryside and the mystical, magical feelings in the air. Less a storyline, then, more a narrative spine to which the other ideas can be attached, so that watching the film becomes a sort of pilgrimage for the audience."

Also, the eccentric character plays into a thread in England that is part of the whole and is part of the trail, which is unique to England. This is about England. Scotland, Wales and Nortern Ireland have their own uniquesness in the greater whole.

In the current international setting, which tends to be antagonistic to all things Anglo (within as well as without) this film is an affectionate look at a great country and it's people.

I see Decks, you've been to Canterbury.

Gibbie

Steve Crook

You won't be surprised to hear that I find that true of many P&P films
No redness of the face due because of that. Others have likened Colpeper to Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill
It has been talked about, but usually only in the depths of P&P admiration.

And what's wrong with romantic ideals?

It never did big business when it was first released. People weren't really ready to listen to the slightly mystical "joy of the land" message. They had other things that seemed important in 1944. But nowadays we find that the messages in the film are much better understood.

Those Archers were ahead of their time again - about 60 years ahead of it :)

Steve Crook

PaPAS

deckard

Yes Steve,you are right,P&P were far ahead of their time.Don't you think that it's a strange human idiosyncrasy that a lot of works of genius are shunned at their original release?It's not only in film,for example,the great composers like Mozart for one,considered a prodigy today but died isolated in a paupers grave.So we talk of men like P&P being so far ahead,but who can you think of thesedays is that far seeing?

"and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock"

DB7

The mysticism worked in Amolad because of the fantasy plot device but in ACT the three contemporary pilgrims seem to be trotting across Lord Byron's England rather than a country at war.

I slightly disagree with Steve's thinking that the 'Archers were ahead of their time again', like a few other pnp's ACT is one that time will not only be kind to but advantageous.

deckard

Just going over these posts again...and I do see your point somewhat,but conversely,doesn't something have to be ahead of it's time for time to catch up with it to see how it became advantageous?Erm...yer I think that's right!

"and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock"

DB7

Was it by accident or design? Other films have been ignored or given a mixed reception at the time of release, but years later they either come into vogue as Get Carter did or a different generation are charmed by the intricacies of say The Wicker Man.

Was another Powell film, Peeping Tom, ahead of it's time or simply a film that would be better evaluated by a more desensitized audience years later?

deckard

Agreed DB7,however the overriding fact is that these films dicussed had something more to say than the mainstream.Thousands of films fall by the wayside,to be lost into obscurity...why? Maybe they lack the original quality and creativity that certain films that stand the test of time undoubtedly have,they seem to ride over the ebb and flow of what is fashionable and stand stalwart.I first saw,for example AMOLAD some 20-25 years ago,when what was in fashion included shock humour,high tech(then)effects and furious pace,but after one viewing of the aforesaid I was completely besotted - and still am,whereas the majority(not all)of the films I saw then have been laid to rest in the great cutting room in the sky.Yes,most certainly time changes the aspect and perception,but also,I believe,makes us understand more the genius of filmakers at their zenith.
The only fly in the ointment is that it's a human frailty(amongst the many)some might say that makes us look back at these peaches with a sweet tooth and glasses that have an undeniable tint toward the rose coloured.

"and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock"

Steve Crook

Desensitized? Or is it that we can now look past what shocked the critics at the time? It certainly wasn't the killing as you never see anyone killed except for Mark himself.

I think what upset them more was the way that it involves you in the murky business. You are made to realise that Mark is quite nice in some ways. You are also made to realise that being a peeping tom is wrong - but then you're watching him, watching the girls.

It's hardly a horror, a slasher or any of the other genres that the critics at the time tried to put it in (one even called it a "snuff movie"). But it is certainly unsettling.

Sadly it was only given a limited release in 1960 so the audiences weren't allowed to have their say.

Steve Crook

PaPAS

Steve Crook

But isn't AMOLAD a special case? :)
The special effects in it can still stand comparison with the best that CGI can offer. Compare the courtroom scene with the arena in Gladiator.

I saw it on Sunday at the Curzon, Soho and it still has the power to move me to laughter & tears.

The story is timeless ("What is time A mere tyranny") but I'm still amazed at the audacity of their making a film about death (& life) just after the end of WWII.

Steve Crook

PaPAS

DB7

I think the two are pretty much related.

I was but a glint in my mother's eye at the time but I wonder if critics and audiences were repulsed by the films seedy side, Mark being an innocent looking but sinister schizophrenic, and that Powell had the audacity to break out of his pigeonhole as a high brow director.

Above all it's voyeuristic and maybe that interaction with the audience was just a bit too unsettling.

With PT maybe Powell was ahead of his time and pushing back subject boundaries but surely ACT was ret·ros in it's snapshot of England?

Steve Crook

Or was it forward looking and is now more in tune with more modern environmental thinking?

At the time, most people were too concerned with finishing off or getting over the war. Now we have more leisure time to consider these things. And you can't know where you're going unless you know where you came from.

Steve Crook

PaPAS

Wee Sonny MacGregor

Michael Henderson in yesterday's Daily Telegraph was not too enamoured of the Shane Meadows film "This is England", commenting "See it if you must, but take a towel because you might feel like having a shower afterwards to wash away the grime."

He goes on to say:

"There was another vision of England at the NFT last week, and it is not unreasonable to suggest that it will be delighting cinema audiences 100 years from now, which is not a claim many might make on behalf of the earnest Meadows. Michael Powell made A Canterbury Tale in 1944, during a rather more damaging war, and it remains one of that great director's finest films.
Actually, the director's credits go jointly to Powell and Emeric Pressburger, the Hungarian Jew, who also co-wrote the film. "The Archers", as they were known, were responsible for making some of the most memorable English films. Think of The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, I Know Where I'm Going, A Matter of Life and Death, Black Narcissus and The Red Shoes as well as A Canterbury Tale. Such riches!
What gives these films their distinction is a generosity that runs counter to the spirit of our age. There are two scenes of particular force in A Canterbury Tale: when a soldier, a cinema organist by profession, is permitted to play Onward, Christian Soldiers on the great organ of Canterbury Cathedral at a farewell service for a regiment that is going overseas; and when two characters, a man and a woman, are lost in a reverie on a hill overlooking the old city, imagining all the men and women who have, in centuries past, trod the same path and felt the same feelings.
This is England all right, another England; a land perceived in terms of mythology, certainly, but all countries have mythologies. They cannot live without them.
What is so revealing about Powell's glorious films is the debt they owed to Pressburger, one of those Hungarians, like Alexander Korda, Georg Solti and George Mikes, who wore his Englishness as comfortably as a light suit.
It didn't trouble Pressburger, who had worked in Berlin and Paris before he reached London, one little bit to become English (he took citizenship in 1946). Nor did it trouble the other notable Middle European figures who contributed so much to English life in the last century. Ernst Gombrich of Vienna, the art historian, Nikolaus Pevsner of Leipzig, the architectural scholar, and the philosophers Isaiah Berlin of Riga, and Karl Popper, another Viennese, all ended up as knights of a realm to which they were happy to belong."

DB7

That's actually very selective and wide of the mark. He avoided mentioning The 49th Parallel which carried a similar message about fascism and contain moments of brutal violence towards minorities. Nazi's and neo-nazi's....