A Canterbury Tale

Year:	1944
Country:	UK
Language:	English
Genre:	Comedy, Drama
IMDB:	IMDB Page
Rating:	8.0 Rate
Collection:	Seen It Wishlist
Community:	5 Have Seen


Director	Michael Powell
	Emeric Pressburger
Selected Cast	Eric Portman as Thomas Colpeper, JP
	Sheila Sim as Alison Smith
	Dennis Price as Peter Gibbs
	John Sweet as Bob Johnson

On DVD & Blu-ray World

DVD

A Canterbury Tale - The Criterion Collection - USA (2006)

DVD

A Canterbury Tale - Granada Ventures - UK (2007)

DVD Box Set

The Powell And Pressburger Collection - Optimum - UK (2005)

Comments and Reviews


BiggieTembo 31st May 2015		I like the idea of The Glue Man, going around dolloping glue in ladies' hair! But the rest of the film is very dated, if we just go by the dialogue. Some of the characters are also very "Gee! You think so?" innocent naive types, which thankfully we've come away from since the 50s, generally speaking. This make the "yokels" seem more realistic than the main characters and they themselves are total stereotypes! But there is a charming scene between a local carpenter and the American Soldier character. The soldier is all "Golly! Gee!" 1930s type speaking and talks to the old carpenter like he's a baby or something (in fact, everybody talks to everybody else like they are babies, except the great and sinister Eric Portman. Even Dennis Price turns up as a Bren Gun Carrier driver, Tommy helmet and all, and talks in a Sadler's Wells theatre accent!) The Carpenter guy seems like some local Kent guy Powell and Pressburger found, and liked, and put him in the movie. In the scene they talk about various types of wood, and how it is dried out, because the American Soldier's Dad was also a carpenter. It's a nice, as-authentic-as-we're-going-to-get scene from a film made during WW2, trying to avoid being too over-propagandistic (is that a real word?) There's some nice cinematic visuals too - interesting framings and use of lighting, black-and-white, etc, which is always a great feature of Powell/Pressburger films. Lovely locations also - old mill buildings and farms and rolling hills down Kent way, which have probably long since gone (can't find a melancholy smiley but if I could I would insert it here), and interesting to see the bomb-clearance sites in Canturbury as they were, so we get a bit of social history as well ;-)

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