June 30: A Canterbury Tale (1944) dir. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger
This is in my top 3 films (if I have one...)
There is something about it which grabbed me the first time I saw it, and continues to do so now decades later when I rewatch it at regular intervals - if it comes on the TV I have to pause everything and watch. It captures a tremendous sense of place.
Eric Portman, Dennis Price and Sheila Sim are all fantastic in the film, who meet with GI Bob Johnson in the fictional village of Chillingbourne and encounter 'the glue man'.
It has some good character analysis in a short piece.
Colpeper is a pilgrim doing penance for a wish that betrays the things he so loves, the land, the sky and the past. He wants to dam the river of time because he is fearful – of change, of women, of otherness. But a dam creates a flood, and the only person he drowns is himself. His journey is towards a brave and bold defeat, and the understanding of a truth that is painful. We first see Colpeper alone in the courtroom. The next time we see him he is in his garden, looking, as Alison puts it, “right” and holding a scythe, an image of the old ways of doing things, and also an image of death, the death of his own plans. By the end he is an angel, and his graduation to this status lies in how he deals with his own actions.To finish, some film locations explored:
There is something about it which grabbed me the first time I saw it, and continues to do so now decades later when I rewatch it at regular intervals - if it comes on the TV I have to pause everything and watch. It captures a tremendous sense of place.
Here is the trailer of the film:
The sense of place that it creates of the rural Kent countryside, the way that the passage of time has shaped it, the connections between the present and the past, and the impact of the war on these centuries of history is powerful. From the first jump cut from the falcon to the Spitfire bird.
There are some excellent performances from all involved, including first time actor John Sweet.
He describes the filming in this extract on the Powell and Pressburger pages by Steve Crook and others.
Eric Portman, Dennis Price and Sheila Sim are all fantastic in the film, who meet with GI Bob Johnson in the fictional village of Chillingbourne and encounter 'the glue man'.
It's an affecting film which explores the connections along the 'old road' that the Pilgrims trod, added to by the poignancy of the backdrop of war, and the bombings of the city very apparent in the scenes set in Canterbury itself.
Read more about it here (it's not an https site so you may get a security warning) and I'm not sure how frequently it is updated or maintained.
If you have access to the Criterion Channel you can watch the extras from the DVD release which include a short film with John Sweet returning to Canterbury for the first time since he was there making the film. The film was not universally liked, and some of the plot points didn't chime with viewers at the time.
It's part of the canon of films made by the Archers which include many classics which will be watched in 50 years time...
Locations used in the film on the Kent Film Office website - another of those county sites sharing details on possible film locations.
Colpeper is a pilgrim doing penance for a wish that betrays the things he so loves, the land, the sky and the past. He wants to dam the river of time because he is fearful – of change, of women, of otherness. But a dam creates a flood, and the only person he drowns is himself. His journey is towards a brave and bold defeat, and the understanding of a truth that is painful. We first see Colpeper alone in the courtroom. The next time we see him he is in his garden, looking, as Alison puts it, “right” and holding a scythe, an image of the old ways of doing things, and also an image of death, the death of his own plans. By the end he is an angel, and his graduation to this status lies in how he deals with his own actions.To finish, some film locations explored:
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