A Canterbury Tale - Criterion Collection | Eric Portman, Sheila Sim

A Canterbury Tale - Criterion Collection | Eric Portman, Sheila Sim | "Do You Believe In The Soul?"

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A Canterbury Tale ...

	A Canterbury Tale - Criterion Collection Eric Portman, Sheila Sim Criterion, 2006 average customer review:based on 22 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The sense of the past

One of the most intellectually complex of all the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, "The Archers," A CANTERBURY TALE was intended to boost morale during the war concerning British and American relations during the preparations for the D-Day invasion of the continent. Three modern pilgrims on their way to Canterbury and its environs--a self-assured "Land Girl," a cynical cinema organist now serving in the army, and a clever and folksy American GI--attempt to solve a bizarre local mystery in the Kentish town of Chillingbourne: the identity of the enigmatic "Glue Man" who keeps pouring glue into the hair of local women after dusk. The film is much more than a mystery, and as the DVD commentary by Ian Christie and the accompanying textual materials in this lovely Criterion release make clear, it is so much more indeed it becomes almost unclassifiable. It is a comedy, particularly in the charming bits with the local children. Like all of Michael Powell's films, it is also a romance involving sexual hysteria. Above all it is a pastoral meditation on the status of England and its heritage at a truly crucial time in its history, and it asserts both the discontinuities with the agrarian past and the need to reconnect with it during a troubled time of modernity. The "aw shucks" demeanour of the Oregon GI (John Sweet) can take some getting used to, but Sheila Sim is really extraordinary as the Land Girl, and Dennis Portman is also quite fine as the local squire who becomes central to the trio's investigations. The tremendous closing sequence of the film involving the organ of the Canterbury Cathedral is one of the most striking evocations of the sublime in the history of film.

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"Do You Believe In The Soul?"

It doesn't have the instant charm of I KNOW WHERE I'M GOING, and Sheils Sim, the ingenue whose first film role this was, doesn't have the swanky, leading lady adorableness that Wendy Hiller radiates in IKWIG, and yet when all is said and done it may be A CANTERBURY TALE that you'll remember longer.

If you are new to Michael Powell's work you might want to watch THE RED SHOES or PEEPING TOM right away, maybe BLACK NARCISSUS. His other movies take a little getting used to, as most of them are genuinely odd. And perhaps nothing is as odd as the storyline of A CANTERBURY TALE, in which eleven young women have been molested at night by a fleeting stranger in Home Guard uniform pouring glue in their hair during the blackout. Okay, that's weird, but what's even stranger is that right away we find out who the culprit is, and the suspense is going to be, will the three pilgrims let him off the hook or not?

On the commentary track, Sheila Sim, now 80 something and still very sharp and lovely, recalls an earlier version of the script in which the "Glueman" didn't use glue at all, but rather ran around ripping girls' skirts with a pair of scissors, and in her recollection this aspect was changed because of its sexual connotations. Interesting that Powell thought of the glue-on-hair scheme since he was the film world's greatest hair fetishist, just as Cecil B. DeMille had a thing for feet. Sim relates that it wasn't until she read Powell's memoirs A LIFE IN MOVIES did she realize he was bitterly disappointed that Deborah Kerr had ankled the part, and that she (Sim) was not even a close second. But I think by the end of the film her performance is so beautiful it makes you happy Kerr stayed home and did something else instead. All of them are good, but of course the jewel in the crown is the performance of John Sweet as the American sergeant Bob Johnson, with his little slits for eyes and his mountain of fried hair and his incomparable aura of sincerity, as though America was both the youngest and the oldest nation in the world. There's nobody like him in the movies, not even Henry Fonda in YOUNG MR LINCOLN or James Stewart in DESTRY RIDES AGAIN or Burl Ives in FROSTY THE SNOWMAN is anywhere near as folksy as the amazing Mr. Sweet.

Eric Portman could be a killer, he's so cold and grim. When he and Sheila Sim share a "secret understanding," the movie seems to be all about carnal love and the way it flip flops into the spiritual. Their scene, hiding in the heather on top of a hill, is the centerpiece of a modern morality tale. The film opens windows in the soul. It has a little knock in it, like a motor car. A CANTERBURY TALE has been beautifully restored; you can see every drop of glue in Sheils Sim's side-parted hair. Haven't seen them all, but I'd say this might be the best DVD of summer 2006.

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another excellent Powell & Pressburger release

This review is for the Criterion Collection DVD edition of the film.

A Canterbury Tale is the story of an American GI named Bob Johnson on his way to Canterbury but gets off his train one stop too early in a mix up. He spends some time in the fictional town of Chillingbourne and befriends a young woman named Alison Smith. They also meet a British soldier named Peter Gibbs. They spend their time attempting to identify a man who attacked Alison by pouring glue in her hair.

The film was directed by the famous team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger and has some excellent scenes of Kent, England.

The Criterion DVD has some excellent special features too and are very fine.

Disc 1 contaiins the film with optional audio commentary by Ian Christie, and excerpts from the American version of the film.

Disc 2 contains a new interview with actress Sheila Sim, a documentary about the GI John Sweet who played the role of Bob johnson in the film, A Canterbury Trail which is about a group who visits the locations where the movie was filmed, and two films titled Listen to Britain one is a documentary made in 1942 and the other is an installation piece made in 2001.

This set is very nice and I strongly recommend watching it,

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Semenpeper

Let's get real: just WHAT so disturbed 1944-era critics about the "lurid" and "eccentric" nature of this flick? The obsession of the Glueman, natch.

They were, basically, correct in their misgivings: Michael Powell, even more than Hitchcock, was THE master of weaving his sexual frustrations and obsessions into his flix narratives. Perhaps even more than Bunuel, who had a better sense of humor.

Colpeper wants enthusiastic fellatio instead of the very occasional frosty sexual coupling with his frosty, barely-seen wife. If they've consummated their marriage at all: they seem to be childless. His frustration shoots forth in the form of the glue attacks, oozing over the hair and, most likely, the faces of the bitches, who really should be dunked in the chair hanging in his office. His blatherings about tradition and saving the virtue of the local girls are a Hitchcockian Macguffin: again, let's get real.

Poor Colpeper speaks eloquently about blessings but never gets his: fellatio from either the handsome, homosexual Dennis Price nor the buck-toothed, full-lipped, Sheila Sim: the mere woman with a sense of history!

It's fitting that he simply disappears when the miracles start happening.

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Beware the Glue Man

The tale starts out with a historical reference to Chaucer. For a fraction you wonder if you are watching the film you expected. And then you see the Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger eagle that transitions us form mid-evil times to present day (1944) England.

Time is taken to give depth and background to all the main characters by the use of interactive dialog. We find that each brings different technical skills and interpretations of the road to Canterbury:

U.S. Army Sergt. Bob Johnson (U.S. Sergeant John Sweet) on his way to Canterbury mistakenly gets off in the hamlet of Kent. He is accused of having his stripes on upside down.

British Sgt. Peter Gibbs (Dennis Price) is temporarily stationed at Kent while staging for overseas. He was and theater organ player before the war.

Alison Smith (Sheila Sim) a London store clerk before the war is now seeking a job as a `Land Girl'. She seems to have an uncanny knowledge of Kent and the Pilgrims' road to Canterbury.

The night they got off the train at Kent they had a strange encounter with the mysterious "Glue Man". Then befriended by the local magistrate, Thomas Colpeper, JP (Thomas Colpeper, JP). Mr. Colpeper is interested in the history of the Pilgrims' Road from Kent to Canterbury.

Until you get pretty much through this story you are never really sure where they are trying to take you. Is the focus on a local mystery? The interaction of the players or the lives of the characters themselves?

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Be sure to get the Criterion version with the second DVD. The main item besides the film is the voice over commentary by film historian Ian Christie which will rival the film for entertainment and after watching you may want to give the film that other star.

I Know Where I'm Going! - Criterion Collection

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reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5

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