A Canterbury Tale
Nov. 26th, 2010 11:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustSIDE Cinema is holding a Powell & Pressburger season: "After all," said Graeme Rigby, introducing A Canterbury Tale, "Michael Powell came here, in the 1970s, for a showing of Peeping Tom..."
I'd wanted to see A Canterbury Tale ever since I read![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sovay's remarks about it (continued here) and I was not disappointed; it is a strange and interesting film. But some of that strangeness surely comes simply from the date when it was made: the past is another country, and and a strange one. In addition, much of what the film is about is England looking at itself in the 1940s and finding itself strange.
The war brings three young people into the village of Chillingbourne, the final staging post on the ancient Pilgrims' Road to Canterbury, in the middle of the night. Like the set up for some classic joke, the British soldier, the US soldier and the Land Girl set off together, but encounter the mysterious Glue Man, who pours glue onto the girl's hair and vanishes into the darkness. Except that there really isn't any mystery about the Glue Man. His identity is obvious from the first: the trio pursue him as far as the Town Hall, they immediately suspect the magistrate and gentleman farmer Thomas Colpeper, who works late and alone. There is never any other suspect, and the detective work which provides a plot for the film is less about identifying the culprit than about gathering evidence. The heart of the story is not the detective puzzle, but the characters, and they reveal themselves in a series of dialogues, one to one conversations which run through the different pairings of speakers, literally ringing the changes.
More of a mystery is why the fastidious Colpeper is waging his bizarre campaign, but, at a surface level at least, that's very little mystery either. When he first meets Alson, he tells her that he will not accept her help on his farm because where there are girls, there is a risk of their going out with soldiers, and he will do all he can to prevent this. He woos the men with magic lantern shows (to which women are not invited), but the girls he attacks. By why choose the glue pot as his weapon? Apparently Powell and Pressburger originally intended the attacker to slash the girls' clothing, "but they felt either the censors or the public would not accept such a suggestive act." (Quoted in the footnotes to a generally interesting article by Carl C. Curtis, III of Liberty University). There's a childishness in the assault by glue, admittedly, but there's a Freudian implication, too, and the sheer oddness of the act makes it more vivid, more personal. It says something about Colpeper's repressed, isolated character which undermines his moral crusade. Like his namesake, Thomas Becket (the "hooly blisful martir" sought by Chaucer's pilgrims), his dedication is selfless, but his cause is open to question, and there's a subtle suggestion, under the final credits, that the events of the story may have changed his ideas somewhat.
Colpeper is uneasy at the presence of women in the vicinity of the camp, but they are everywhere. Alison's investigation of the Glue Man's victims introduces her to a variety of women - but all of them are doing essential work. They drive buses, run the signal box, deliver the post, run the pub and, like Alison herself, work on the farms. Much of this is war work, but not all of it: Alison's conversation with Prudence Honeywood reveals that for Pru the farm is a long-term responsibility, while for Alison the war has been an opportunity to escape into work she finds congenial (and this conversation, which is tangential to the plot of the film but central to its theme, also carries it with flying colours through the Bechdel test).
The film is sympathetic to Colpeper's desire that women not go out with other men while their 'own' men are far away (in the scene on the train to Canterbury, Bob admits that he wouldn't like 'his' girl to go out with strangers in his absence). But fidelity can't be forced. Alison remains true to the memory of her lost fiancé, despite being allowed quite extraordinary latitude. No-one but the Glue Man seems to question the propriety of her relationship with her two soldiers, and the three of them lounge on the four-poster bed in Bob's room at the inn: it's perfectly innocent, but would 1940s respectability have seen it in that light? When Colpeper apologises to her on the hillside ("I misjudged you") might refer to his reluctance to employ her on his farm, but seems more apt if applied to the Glue Man's attack on her: she was out with soldiers only in the most literal sense. Moreover, no-one (Colpeper this time included) seems to have the slightest problem with her 13 blissful days with her fiancé in the caravan: the issue is fidelity, not strict sexual morality.
Colpeper is also placed in opposition to the modern culture of the young men, specifically over the cinema. In his first conversation with Bob, he asks the young American what he did in Salisbury, and Bob says that he has seen a couple of swell movies; but he knows that in Canterbury he must look out for the cathedral. On the one hand, this seems unfair to Bob, who is gradually revealed to be a much more reflective character than this would suggest (then again, Bob's whole eruption into the film plays up idea of the brash and shallow American, slow to realise that he has left his train too early); on the other hand, while it's fair enough for Colpeper to point out that Bob has come a long way just to go to the movies, his dismissal of the art form which has brought him into being is a bit too de haut en bas to be sympathetic. Later, in his tête à tête with Peter, he again dismisses cinema as unworthy of consideration: Peter has abandoned his vocation as a church organist for a lesser occupation. It doesn't occur to him to ask whether Peter enjoys his work, or is good at it, cinema music is by definition inferior. (By the time this was filmed, cinema organist must surely have been a dying profession, but A Canterbury Tale is in some ways curiously timeless). The final scene in Canterbury cathedral, in which Peter's unintentional pilgrimage is nonetheless rewarded with redemption, would seem to bear this out: the cathedral organist is kinder about the cinema organ - he has himself played harmonium in a circus - but these are things which must be transcended. Then again, Colpeper is dismissive of the cinema, but his lecture illustrated with magic lantern slides is completely inept: his lecture is not addressed to his audience but to himself (and us), and the magic lantern serves only to frame his magnificent profile as he speaks.
The film seems oddly divided between the eternal pastoral of Chillingbourne and the almost newsreel quality of the footage of Canterbury. I had wondered if I was responding to a difference between studio and location filming, but although Chillingbourne itself is fictitious, many of the scenes set there were filmed on location in Kent. The country is at war, but this is something that happens off-screen. It echoes through the film: the hawk that become a plane in the opening sequence, the boys' war games, the blackout - and finally in the departure for some unknown destination of Peter and his colleagues (do they really march out while he is aloft playing the organ?). If the haymaking is now the preserve of women and small boys, well, it was always work that required every available hand. Colpeper, at least, still cuts his grass by hand with a scythe, and his fine house, which Alison so admires and covets, must be one of the newest buildings we see in the village (apart from the railway station, and it's too dark to see that). But the Canterbury through which Alson walks is a city in the Blitz, all tumbled walls and gaping basements. More than anything else, it emphasises that this is a film about now, the present moment: but it must have been a brave decision to show this level of damage, even in order to say that the Cathedral stands despite it all, the Cathedral and all it represents, surviving and more clearly visible because so much has been levelled around it.
It only adds to the strangeness of the film that it is peopled with very familiar faces: Eric Portman was already an established star, but it took me a while to recognise the very young Dennis Price (five years before he was Louis Mazzini in Kind Hearts and Coronets). The bit parts, too - the comedy stationmaster appearing out of the darkness is unmistakably Charles Hawtrey, but can the owner of the garage where the caravan is stored really be Bill Fraser? (I don't know; can he? I can't find any trace of it. The garage hand looks familiar, too).
I'd wanted to see A Canterbury Tale ever since I read
sovay's remarks about it (continued here) and I was not disappointed; it is a strange and interesting film. But some of that strangeness surely comes simply from the date when it was made: the past is another country, and and a strange one. In addition, much of what the film is about is England looking at itself in the 1940s and finding itself strange.The war brings three young people into the village of Chillingbourne, the final staging post on the ancient Pilgrims' Road to Canterbury, in the middle of the night. Like the set up for some classic joke, the British soldier, the US soldier and the Land Girl set off together, but encounter the mysterious Glue Man, who pours glue onto the girl's hair and vanishes into the darkness. Except that there really isn't any mystery about the Glue Man. His identity is obvious from the first: the trio pursue him as far as the Town Hall, they immediately suspect the magistrate and gentleman farmer Thomas Colpeper, who works late and alone. There is never any other suspect, and the detective work which provides a plot for the film is less about identifying the culprit than about gathering evidence. The heart of the story is not the detective puzzle, but the characters, and they reveal themselves in a series of dialogues, one to one conversations which run through the different pairings of speakers, literally ringing the changes.
More of a mystery is why the fastidious Colpeper is waging his bizarre campaign, but, at a surface level at least, that's very little mystery either. When he first meets Alson, he tells her that he will not accept her help on his farm because where there are girls, there is a risk of their going out with soldiers, and he will do all he can to prevent this. He woos the men with magic lantern shows (to which women are not invited), but the girls he attacks. By why choose the glue pot as his weapon? Apparently Powell and Pressburger originally intended the attacker to slash the girls' clothing, "but they felt either the censors or the public would not accept such a suggestive act." (Quoted in the footnotes to a generally interesting article by Carl C. Curtis, III of Liberty University). There's a childishness in the assault by glue, admittedly, but there's a Freudian implication, too, and the sheer oddness of the act makes it more vivid, more personal. It says something about Colpeper's repressed, isolated character which undermines his moral crusade. Like his namesake, Thomas Becket (the "hooly blisful martir" sought by Chaucer's pilgrims), his dedication is selfless, but his cause is open to question, and there's a subtle suggestion, under the final credits, that the events of the story may have changed his ideas somewhat.
Colpeper is uneasy at the presence of women in the vicinity of the camp, but they are everywhere. Alison's investigation of the Glue Man's victims introduces her to a variety of women - but all of them are doing essential work. They drive buses, run the signal box, deliver the post, run the pub and, like Alison herself, work on the farms. Much of this is war work, but not all of it: Alison's conversation with Prudence Honeywood reveals that for Pru the farm is a long-term responsibility, while for Alison the war has been an opportunity to escape into work she finds congenial (and this conversation, which is tangential to the plot of the film but central to its theme, also carries it with flying colours through the Bechdel test).
The film is sympathetic to Colpeper's desire that women not go out with other men while their 'own' men are far away (in the scene on the train to Canterbury, Bob admits that he wouldn't like 'his' girl to go out with strangers in his absence). But fidelity can't be forced. Alison remains true to the memory of her lost fiancé, despite being allowed quite extraordinary latitude. No-one but the Glue Man seems to question the propriety of her relationship with her two soldiers, and the three of them lounge on the four-poster bed in Bob's room at the inn: it's perfectly innocent, but would 1940s respectability have seen it in that light? When Colpeper apologises to her on the hillside ("I misjudged you") might refer to his reluctance to employ her on his farm, but seems more apt if applied to the Glue Man's attack on her: she was out with soldiers only in the most literal sense. Moreover, no-one (Colpeper this time included) seems to have the slightest problem with her 13 blissful days with her fiancé in the caravan: the issue is fidelity, not strict sexual morality.
Colpeper is also placed in opposition to the modern culture of the young men, specifically over the cinema. In his first conversation with Bob, he asks the young American what he did in Salisbury, and Bob says that he has seen a couple of swell movies; but he knows that in Canterbury he must look out for the cathedral. On the one hand, this seems unfair to Bob, who is gradually revealed to be a much more reflective character than this would suggest (then again, Bob's whole eruption into the film plays up idea of the brash and shallow American, slow to realise that he has left his train too early); on the other hand, while it's fair enough for Colpeper to point out that Bob has come a long way just to go to the movies, his dismissal of the art form which has brought him into being is a bit too de haut en bas to be sympathetic. Later, in his tête à tête with Peter, he again dismisses cinema as unworthy of consideration: Peter has abandoned his vocation as a church organist for a lesser occupation. It doesn't occur to him to ask whether Peter enjoys his work, or is good at it, cinema music is by definition inferior. (By the time this was filmed, cinema organist must surely have been a dying profession, but A Canterbury Tale is in some ways curiously timeless). The final scene in Canterbury cathedral, in which Peter's unintentional pilgrimage is nonetheless rewarded with redemption, would seem to bear this out: the cathedral organist is kinder about the cinema organ - he has himself played harmonium in a circus - but these are things which must be transcended. Then again, Colpeper is dismissive of the cinema, but his lecture illustrated with magic lantern slides is completely inept: his lecture is not addressed to his audience but to himself (and us), and the magic lantern serves only to frame his magnificent profile as he speaks.
The film seems oddly divided between the eternal pastoral of Chillingbourne and the almost newsreel quality of the footage of Canterbury. I had wondered if I was responding to a difference between studio and location filming, but although Chillingbourne itself is fictitious, many of the scenes set there were filmed on location in Kent. The country is at war, but this is something that happens off-screen. It echoes through the film: the hawk that become a plane in the opening sequence, the boys' war games, the blackout - and finally in the departure for some unknown destination of Peter and his colleagues (do they really march out while he is aloft playing the organ?). If the haymaking is now the preserve of women and small boys, well, it was always work that required every available hand. Colpeper, at least, still cuts his grass by hand with a scythe, and his fine house, which Alison so admires and covets, must be one of the newest buildings we see in the village (apart from the railway station, and it's too dark to see that). But the Canterbury through which Alson walks is a city in the Blitz, all tumbled walls and gaping basements. More than anything else, it emphasises that this is a film about now, the present moment: but it must have been a brave decision to show this level of damage, even in order to say that the Cathedral stands despite it all, the Cathedral and all it represents, surviving and more clearly visible because so much has been levelled around it.
It only adds to the strangeness of the film that it is peopled with very familiar faces: Eric Portman was already an established star, but it took me a while to recognise the very young Dennis Price (five years before he was Louis Mazzini in Kind Hearts and Coronets). The bit parts, too - the comedy stationmaster appearing out of the darkness is unmistakably Charles Hawtrey, but can the owner of the garage where the caravan is stored really be Bill Fraser? (I don't know; can he? I can't find any trace of it. The garage hand looks familiar, too).
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-27 12:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-27 09:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-11-27 10:00 am (UTC)A Canterbury Tale is one of my very favourite films.
I think its strangeness is entirely its own. Conventional studio movies of the 40s aren't anything like this.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-27 11:33 am (UTC)This is also true.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-29 08:40 pm (UTC)(I'm catching up on tabbed LJ posts; I'm just about through with the 26th)
Hope you guys are keeping warm. You (and Durham) are in my thoughts today. I'm hoping that maybe someone will take photos of all the snow?