A Canterbury Tale

Michael Powell (1944)

119min

U Certificate

Review

Our Score

by Adrian Turner

This re-think of Chaucer from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger is the most peculiar piece of wartime propaganda ever devised. Two army sergeants (one British, one American) and a girl arrive at a Kentish village within praying distance of Canterbury, where the women fraternise with servicemen and one local pours glue into their hair as punishment. Our three modern pilgrims set out to find the perpetrator. While it's hard to convey the film's eerie shifts of mood, it impresses as a study of a community resistant to change. In the year of D-Day, Powell and Pressburger seem torn between welcoming American support and warning of a loss of traditional English values. This far-sighted film, which was dismissed at the time, is lyrical in its celebration of a disappearing England.

Summary

A land girl, an Army sergeant and a GI meet in a small Kent village during the Second World War and set out to unmask the mystery assailant conducting an unusual reign of terror against local women. Powell and Pressburger's mystery, starring Eric Portman, Sheila Sim, John Sweet, Esmond Knight and Dennis Price.

Cast & Crew

Thomas Colpepper Eric Portman

Alison Smith Sheila Sim

Bob Johnson John Sweet

Sergeant Peter Gibbs Dennis Price

Narrator / Seven-Sisters soldier / Village idiot Esmond Knight

Thomas Duckett Charles Hawtrey

Woodcock Hay Petrie

Ned Horton George Merritt (1)

Jim Horton Edward Rigby

Prudence Honeywood Freda Jackson

Fee Baker Betty Jardine

Organist Eliot Makeham

Director Michael Powell

Director Emeric Pressburger

Other Information

Language: EnglishBlack and whiteTheatrical distributor: General Film Dist LtdAvailable on: video and DVD

Drama

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Michael Powell (1944)

Review

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