A Canterbury Tale

[Steve Crook]

Sheila Sim of course - I'd even checked her dob to see how close she was to my mother. Fingers work faster than my brain! Same goes for WRAF!

I used "The Pilgrim Road" in italics deliberately as the best known route is The Pilgrims' Way - which was the one I was meaning and was certainly the route Chaucer and P&P were using.

But even for The Pilgrim's Way there are a few variations. The one followed by Chaucer's pilgrims started in London and went through Rochester. The one best known as The Pilgrim's Way went from Winchester and along the old drover's routes along the North Downs.

The scenes we see of the Chaucerian Pilgrims at the start of A Canterbury Tale were filmed at St. Martha's Hill near Guildford. Much of the traditional Pilgrim's Way is now part of the modern road network and isn't a very interesting (or particularly safe) walk. The Ramblers' Association now advise people follow St. Swithun's Way instead from Winchester to Farnham and then the North Downs Way from Farnham to Canterbury

Steve

[Steve Crook]

i have to agree a great film worth watching many times over.
you should get criterion collection of A Canterbury Tale.
with Steve showing the locations used in the film.

Or come and join us - the last Sunday in August every year

Steve

[flynn]

i meant to go. but something came up.so it slipped my mind.i must go next year.

[Santonix]

Do come along next year, it's well worth it.

[TimR]

It is the most beautiful and moving British film I have seen. I have lost count of how many times I have seen it now and each time it has the same effect, from the opening bells.

[flynn]

i will do Santonix.i was disappointed when i realised i had missed it.

[Santonix]

Great news flynn, I shall look forward to meeting you in Canterbury.

[DB7]

My favourite film: A Canterbury Tale

Xan Brooks continues our writers' favourite films series by confessing devotion to Michael Powell's A Canterbury Tale


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. None of them want to be there; they would rather be at home, except they are so tired, lonely and saddle-sore that they scarcely know where home is anymore. The film throws them together and has them solve a local mystery. Then it cuts the ties and turns them loose, batting the pilgrims onward to Canterbury where they wander the bombsites and blank spaces of the town centre; their worlds a mess, their futures uncertain. Eventually, against all the odds, they each receive a blessing.

A Canterbury Tale may be the most loving and tender film about England ever made. It's a picture that's steeped in nature, in thrall to myth and history; a re-affirmation of the English character, customs and countryside from a time when many viewers may have wondered whether this underpinning had been kicked clean away. But the film's genius lies in the way it connects these big, sweeping themes to the intimate, the eccentric and the everyday. It's the human details that give it life, and the film is always beautifully played – particularly by Eric Portman as the rigid local magistrate and Dennis Price as a hard-bitten soldier who refuses to name the thing he loves.
A Canterbury Tale

On beginning this blog, I was going to write that the story of A Canterbury Tale is a bit like the legend of the Arthurian knights asleep on the hillside, waiting to be called forth at the hour of greatest need. But that's not quite right, because the film implicitly suggests that there is no hillside, no sleeping knights, and no magical horn to call them forth. The only world is the one we're in, bashed about and bent out of shape, and the only heroes the people around us: frail and fearful, sometimes misguided, and coping as best they can. But if we can learn to trust them, and invite them to trust us back, then we may just be OK. More than that, we might even be blessed; rattling through the ruins to uncover miracles in derelict caravans and hear the voice of angels in the train whistle's yelp.

[Fellwanderer]

It's a story that could be re-worked for modern times, but what is the story? The war doesn't really have all that much to do with it. Maybe that people are thought to be "lost by enemy action" and as an excuse for people to be uprooted from their homes and moved to other parts of the country, or to other countries. The whodunnit is quickly solved and becomes a whydunnit. The core of the story is about getting close to your ancestors, to be aware of your history without necessarily living in the past.


But could the style be re-created in a modern film? The slowing down to the pace of the seasons, the innocence of children's games. The long languid looks at the countryside and the clouds on a summer's day?


There are no big stars in it, and that's good. For 3 of the 4 leading players it was their first significant role in a film. For 2 of them it was the first film they had ever worked on, and one was just an amateur actor. Many of the supporting cast were also amateurs.


Some people do have problems appreciating this film, until they adjust to its pace.


Steve

In my view, it just wouldn't work if recreated now - or 35 years ago. It came from a more innocent age, even if it was at one of the darkest moments in our history.

I've always thought the war was an important element as Culpepper strove to bring home the importance of an understanding of the past and what they were fighting for.

But whatever, a masterpiece that I shall watch again tomorrow if the weather is inclement.

[Steve Crook]

In my view, it just wouldn't work if recreated now - or 35 years ago. It came from a more innocent age, even if it was at one of the darkest moments in our history.

I've always thought the war was an important element as Culpepper strove to bring home the importance of an understanding of the past and what they were fighting for.

But whatever, a masterpiece that I shall watch again tomorrow if the weather is inclement.

But that applies at any time, not just in wartime when you're physically fighting for it. An understanding of the past is always important. If you don't know how you got here, how can you know where you're going?

But a knowledge of and an understanding of the past doesn't mean that you have to live in the past. Things change, times change, people change.

Steve

[didi-5]

I'm not sure a version of A Canterbury Tale made now would work. But then I wouldn't want to see a new version, the old one is just fine. Almost perfect in fact. It instantly became one of my favourite films on first viewing. I'm not sure I totally understand it, but maybe that doesn't matter. It has so many fine scenes, fine performances, and is beautifully written and shot.

[Steve Crook]

I'm not sure a version of A Canterbury Tale made now would work. But then I wouldn't want to see a new version, the old one is just fine. Almost perfect in fact. It instantly became one of my favourite films on first viewing. I'm not sure I totally understand it, but maybe that doesn't matter. It has so many fine scenes, fine performances, and is beautifully written and shot.

No Powell & Pressburger film could or should ever be re-made, they are all perfect as they are

A few people have done other works (stage plays, radio & TV plays, even musicals) based on some of them. None of them have been a huge success even though they're very interesting.

Although they have also acted as an influence on or inspiration for a lot of other film-makers. But few of them have come close to any individual P&P film and none of them have got close to producing a body of work similar to what P&P managed

Steve

[Fellwanderer]

I'm not sure a version of A Canterbury Tale made now would work. But then I wouldn't want to see a new version, the old one is just fine. Almost perfect in fact. It instantly became one of my favourite films on first viewing. I'm not sure I totally understand it, but maybe that doesn't matter. It has so many fine scenes, fine performances, and is beautifully written and shot.

I agree - it was very much of its time.

Of course, any idea can be reworked to fit a new age but I just don't see the concept behind ACT being a success today - it's too much a "Me! Me! Me!" society.

At least I enjoyed it again this morning before going out to enjoy the sunshine and now to watch the best film ever made specifically for television