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A Canterbury Tale
Michael Powell
(1944)
119min
U Certificate
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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
see more
Other Information
Language:
English
Black and white
Theatrical distributor:
General Film Dist Ltd
Available on:
video and DVD
Drama
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