Pilgrims’ Progress… A Canterbury Tale (1944), BFI, Cinema Unbound

We’re off on the Road to Canterbury but when it comes to Powell and Pressburger we’ve been on the Pilgrims’ Way since the start of October. Few BFI seasons have generated such a sustained fear of missing out than this one, probably due to the length of the season, the amount of rare and restored film but mostly, the chance to see some of my favourite films as nature intended, films on film or at least screened on the big screen. With some, like Blimp, I Know Where I’m Going, Black Narcissus and AMOLAD, I’ve ticked these boxes with accompanying ravings on this blog but it was still so good to watch them again over the last few weeks. With others, like this one, I’ve only ever seen them on home media and I last wrote about it ten years ago; seeing it on 35mm celluloid, the BFI’s National Archive print, in a packed NF2 on this most fractious of Remembrance Days, was a different experience.

 

A Canterbury Tale has perhaps more in common with 49^th Parallel than other of the Archers’ major works and has a lower-key propagandist aim to help the Brits accommodate their new American allies represented here by an actual GI Sgt. John Sweet, who’s amateur style serves to add to the film’s deep-lying strangeness. His bantering with Charles Hawtrey’s station master Thomas Duckett, is among his more convincing moments even if the pace is set by Hawtrey.

 

Powell described Pressburger’s “valiant attempts” to turn the film into a detective thriller but the Glue Man plot doesn’t entirely wash and that’s fine because it is so intrinsically connected to the narrative’s real agenda which is what it means to be English in a time of crisis and dislocation. It’s about three individuals finding their direction and resolve just when they need it and their reward for attempting to understand the Pilgrims’ Way and the road to Canterbury. If you hadn’t seen AMOLAD, you might think it’s a Christian film but it’s all about the main characters self-discovery, finding themselves before embarking on the next stage of their personal war journey. It’s one of the Archer’s best because of the intimacy of the story and the subtlety of its telling: they’d perfected their art in the three years since Canada.

 

Sgt John Sweet and Mr Dennis Price

Pressburger again writes so well in dealing with the outsider GI, Sgt Bob Johnson who finds common ground with the “natives” initially by swapping notes on wood craft with the local wheelwright, played by Edward Rigby and who ends up discovering the meaning of the pilgrimage and the locale. At the same time, he is quickly accepted as a friend by the locals, impressed with his knowledge of trees but also his steadfast affability. The film is here to make friends and influence people but as ever the communication is direct no matter how quirky; they never overdo it or wear out their ideas, this is brisk, crisp filmmaking with almost perfect decision making. Part of their golden run of the 1940s from Blimp (arguably even The Spy in Black) - to A Small Back Room with the next decade more diverse and uncertain; perhaps the War energised them and enabled them to ground every fantasy on the horrific realities they and their audience knew all too well.

 

So it is that Powell begins with Chaucer and a parade of medieval pilgrims making their way along the ancient road to Canterbury. A falconer watches his Kestrel soar and the image is replaced by a Spitfire ripping through the clouds, watched from below by the same face, 600 years on, and dressed as a soldier: the place is more important than the time, and so is the person.

 

All goes dark and we see a train arriving at a station as our main players arrive in the small Kent village of Shottenden with GI Bob mistakenly thinking the station master was calling out for Canterbury, the next stop. With him are British Sergeant Peter Gibbs (Dennis Price) and Land Girl, Alison Smith (Sheila Sim) who Duckett gets the two gents to escort to the Town Hall. Their protection is not enough though as she has adhesive smeared on her hair by the mysterious Glue Man who runs off into the dark evading their chase. They find shelter in the Hall and are introduced to the enigmatic local magistrate, Thomas Colpeper JP (Eric Portman), within whose still waters lies deep meaning.

 

Something odd in Colpeper's closet

Powell was right about the Glue Man, and Alison is quickly suspicious of Culpepper, leading the three to embark on a mission to uncover the sticky villain, they begin a more spiritual quest and quickly become a close-nit team connected by a shared language, philosophical heritage and craftsmanship. There’s very little mention of the war, you don’t need to, it’s 1944 and everyone watching knows the score just as, today, so many misconstrue the heroic endeavours of the past; we’re out of step on our national pilgrimage, fractured by our inability to see beyond difference and to decipher our civil morality.

 

Canterbury is so much smarter than much modern discourse, focusing on the personal relationships and the humour you find even in war. Bob’s elegant room is so close to the house across the street that two men could shake hands across the divide, “but why would they want to?” is his smart response. He meets one of the local loads standing room height outside his window on a cart full of hay and later recruits him and his mates to help solve the mystery. It’s not hard to imagine the impact of the GI “invasion” on wartime Britain and Bob is there to show how Americans were more than just wise-cracking, girl-hungry show-offs. Apparently, Burgess Meredith was hired to knock some of the rough edges off Bob’s dialogue but John Sweet’ naturally respect and good-humoured humility was all his own work. He ended up being a teacher and I’m sure he was a good one.

 

Powell had originally planned for his crush Deborah Kerr to play Alison and he said that it took him years to accept how good Sheila Sim was. It was her first film and yet she was stage-hardened and does exceptionally well especially alongside the cerebral intensity of Eric Portman. This first meeting between Alison and Colpeper reveals his distaste for women but it also shows Alison’s strength of character and there’s immediately more to their relationship than meets the eye. So typical of Emeric to include this undercurrent in such a delicate way… Colpeper could learn more from Alison than she from him.

The city girl impresses the locals

 

As with Bob, city girl Alison has to work double hard to impress the locals and gains employment as a Land Girl and travels on a pony and cart with Bob to a wheelwright… this scene has an almost documentary feel featuring a genuine Kentish wood yard and locals as extras, including the two brothers who owned the adjoining blacksmith and wood workshop. Alison again stands up for herself, turning the local’s joshing around just as Bob bonds with the wheelwright on the subject of timber. Turns out his family’s methods of lumber management aren’t so different from those used by the limeys.

 

Alison and Bob travel on past a beautiful Georgian house, “What wouldn't I give to grow old in a place like that?” Alison sighs, shortly before spotting Colpeper scything away in his long grass… Shaken, she moves on but here is their connection again. The emotional back stories are revealed as Alison and Bob continue their travel along a ridge over-looking the rolling hills. Bob hasn’t heard from his sweetheart in many weeks – “letter starvation” – yet Alison’s sweetheart has been lost in action. With this man she had taken an idyllic caravan holiday in the area before the war, something we’d take for granted now but an unmarried couple on this kind of trek was very “modern” for the times: that said, my Uncle Frank took my Aunty Lil cycling in North Wales in 1932 well before they were wed!

 

Alison meets Peter and his charges on their Bren Gun Carriers: startling speed in the quiet lanes and a reminder of the metallic efficiency of the waiting war… They are beginning to suspect Colpeper and agree to attend his lecture on local antiquity at the “Colpeper Institute”. This scene is a very powerful one and reveals much of Colpeper’s philosophy and his need to try and educate the daydreaming Men of Albion. He wants to invoke the past as if it still with us… the thematic core of the film with Ian Christie noting elements of Chesterton, TS Elliot and Kipling in his rhetoric.

 

Colpeper is shown silhouetted as a band of light spreads across his intense gaze whilst at the same time the camera focuses on Alison rapt full face and deeply thoughtful as she slowly closes her eyes in concentration… Is their connection spiritual, philosophical or even more? She offers Colpeper’s institute the ancient coins she and her lover had discovered on their last trip: a recognition that this history needs to be in the right hands and also that she has found a kindred spirit? Yet, the three maintain their interest in un-masking the adhesive assailant and as Bob enlists the help of some local junior war-gamers, Peter goes to his key confrontation with Colpeper.

 

Dennis Price plays with his trademark mix of politely, diffidence but his Peter meets his match with the driven and principled Colpeper who challenges his firm assumption that he is content: a well-paid cinema organist who might still want to play the cathedrals as he was once taught. Again, we see the subtlety of the Archers’, everyone has some validity to their arguments but they challenge each other and reach a common understanding through a recognition of difference but also similarity.

 

As someone commented recently, civilization is measured by its ability to not just recognise difference but to adapt in ways that enable understanding and the establishment of common purpose. This is what A Canterbury Tale is all about… and it’s as relevant today as it ever was.

 

Alison goes for a magical walk on the Pilgrim’s Way in one of the film’s most beautifully shot sequences.  Director of Cinematography Erwin Hillier apparently had running battles with Powell about waiting for the best quality clouds and here his perseverance pays off as Sim walks through the woods and finally encounters her epiphany. Just as she sees the distant cathedral, she hears the voices of pilgrims past and turns around to hear Colpeper as he lies on his back contemplating the clouds. They are never more connected than at this moment as she tells him of her experience… He understands her mental sensitivities and that she is as attuned to place and purpose as he is. The camera shifts to a studio shot as they lie close to each other, so closely that Alison appears to be almost leaning on the older man. They hide – unspoken complicity – as Peter and Bob stroll past but the reverie is broken as Colpeper hears the soldiers talk of their suspicions even though both admit to liking him.

 

Now, all parties make their way to Canterbury and there will be revelations and surprises that lift the heart even in a studio Cathedral expertly constructed by Alfred Junge…  Michael Powell chose and made use of superb locations - conveying so much of his message through the place as much as the time. Even in black and white the breeze-bent leaves of the mass of trees are stunning and, as you bask in the monochrome warmth of a hazy sunny day - the kind of day when you lose sense of time and dream a little easier - the Archers have done their job and made us think.

 

They always do.