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.

 

The bringer of peace… A Message from Mars (1913)

Science fiction has always been more about Right Here rather than Out There and the late-Victorian/Edwardian vogue for the genre often focused on the military threat from other worlds. There may be a line between War of the Worlds, imperial expansion and the boom of the 1950s which was arguably more about the insidious threat of creeping communism than invasions from space. Get to the sixties and, well, the enemy was definitely our own governments as the new wave of Philip K Dick, Harland Ellison et al struck out against totalitarianism in our name.

Alien races could also use their advanced states to help rather than humble… as this recovered relic from 1913 demonstrates. Aliens were to be admired, better versions of ourselves and proof that improvement can be continuous: our conscience… reminding us of social responsibilities and of the gap between the rich and the deserving poor.

E. Holman Clark and the orginal Charles Hawtrey

A Message from Mars is Britain’s first feature-length science fiction film – maybe even her first feature film - and has now been restored to full length following painstaking restoration based on two shorter versions and a tinted print by the BFI National Archive. The film simply hasn’t been seen in its original length and format for a century and makes for strangely familiar viewing… Mars is studio-based and looks a little like ancient Rome with Martians dressed in the kind of clothes favoured by Alistair Crowley for his weekend hobbies whilst there are stunning shots of Trafalgar Square and London streets more of the nineteenth than twentieth century: a window on a lost world.

The silent streets of London

The film was based on a popular stage play from 1899 by Liverpool-born writer Richard Ganthony and adapted for the screen by director J. Wallett Waller. The film’s star, popular theatre player Charles Hawtrey (no relation to the Carry On star who changed his name for the association…) recreates his stage role with relish playing Horace Parker a self-obsessed gentleman about town who has no time for anyone but himself.

Events begin on the Red Planet where the court of Mars is about to find Ramiel (E. Holman Clark) guilty of transgressing one of their most sacred laws. Using a viewing device the court looks down on their neighbouring planet to observe Parker’s repeated acts of un-kindness as he barges a poor match seller away at Trafalgar Square, refuses to pay after watching a Punch and Judy show and spurns the pleas for help of a worthy tramp (Hubert Willis) who has fallen on hard times.

Such a mean old man...

As punishment Ramiel is sent to Earth to change the course of Parker’s lamentable existence… he must get the Earthman to act out of kindness in order to win back his place in Martian society.

Parker is so self-engrossed he refuses to make himself ready to take his pretty fiancé Minnie Templer (Crissie Bell) to a party but when she arrives with her Aunt Martha (Kate Tyndale), Minnie lets him off and makes sure he’s comfortable… you can see how their relationship works (even though he looks twenty years too old for her). Things backfire as smoothie Arthur Dicey (Frank Hector) arrives and offers to take Parker’s belle to the ball… but he’s too lazily complacent to notice.

Busy doing nothing

Cue Ramiel’s timely apparition at Parker’s front door… he looks around then disappears again to re-appear in the corner of Parker’s study. Parker tries to bluster his way past the Martian with a mission but is buffeted by telekinetic waves – a smart special effect from Waller that still looks pretty cool today.

Ramiel uses the Force

Ramiel forces Parker outside and in the direction of unfortunates… he begrudgingly buys a posy from a tearful flower-seller, gifts a tramp some money and eventually – reluctantly – gives a wad of cash to aid a man mown down by a motor vehicle: he looks like a lost cause.

Summoning the spirit of Christmas present, Ramiel shows him the impact of his selfish ways on Minnie who is beginning to enjoy Dicey’s company at the Clarence’s shindig… but he still doesn’t look like budging.

Parker is shown Minnie dallying with Dicey

No spoilers… In desperation Ramiel transforms Parker into a pauper – a tramp just like the man he refused to help. Hungry and with his wealthy sheen removed will this be the move that finally changes his thinking? Can he win back Minnie, find his compassion and help Remiel recover his own place back on Mars?

A Message from Mars is clearly of its time but from A Christmas Carol through It’s a Wonderful Life to Groundhog Day (even The Lego Movie!) we all love a little magic realism that holds a mirror up to our own guilty lives: a quick fix – well an hour or two – that shows us that even though we’re bad we’re not all that bad.

It’s fascinating to watch a British feature from this period and Waller shows himself to be up to speed with the latest innovations in his choice of shots – the narrative flows seamlessly as characters’ eye-line’s lead onto each scene shift, the camera pans and the actors use the framed space to maximum effect. There’s even a superb shot of a fire engine tearing through Edwardian streets.

The acting is a little stagey but very well done with Hawtrey the stand out as the puffed-up Parker – a rich man fighting for his right to go through life with the snooze button switched full on. He has range though and he’ll get to show it.

E. Holman Clark is grumpily ethereal as Rameil – a man-Martian intent on rescuing an alien’s life rather more than his own (we never find out what it was he did to deserve this) whilst Crissie Bell fizzes as the patient Minnie somehow infatuated with London’s laziest…

The restoration looks stunning given the age and there are some frames that are so clear it almost looked like this was some kind of practical joke – a modern pastiche – but no, that’s what you get for six months of painstaking diligence. There’s a short feature on the work on the BBC arts page: a frame-by-frame labour of love.

Chrissie Bell: Edwardian elegance

The film also features a new score from Matthew Herbert, Creative Director of the New Radiophonic Workshop. Herbert used a genuine 1913 piano to create scratchily ambient music along with a welter of “found sounds” from motor cars to burning wood. It’s not to everyone’s taste perhaps but it works well for me in highlighting the uncanny extra-terrestrial intervention: another red world...

A Message from Mars was released on 12th December on both the BFI and BBC Arts players and is available to watch for free! So, go ahead and fill your boots and thank both organisations for this early present: A Merry Christmas to us all; God bless us, every one!

Inception… A Canterbury Tale (1944)

For some, the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger can generate a very personal response and A Canterbury Tale is probably the epitome of this intimate connectivity. There’s a sense of febrile vulnerability in many of their films with characters on the edge of self-awareness and self-control; these open emotional  states pulling you in whether it’s an old man realising his time has passed or a nun holding herself in as a colleague lets herself go...

These passions are always played out in very formalised situations, the army, holy orders, the ballet… and the juxtaposition of professional discipline with repressed emotion nudges against the truth in all of us. This is every bit as disconcerting as the most overtly confrontational modern dramas and you can’t just watch and walk when it comes to their best work… you’re haunted by it.

In A Canterbury Tale seemingly very little happens but, for a group of people about to fight for their lives, there are subtle emotional shifts that will give them every reason for wanting to survive. The counter-intuitive, almost playful, propaganda of Powell and Pressburger drives the narrative as they set out to examine what it is we are fighting for in the summer stillness prior to invasion of Europe.

As the British and their American allies amassed together for the first time, Michael Powell chose his home county of Kent as the perfect location to help in their confirmation of purpose. He wanted to reconnect the British with their history and values whilst also showing that Americans could do the same: a shared history, philosophical heritage and, as it turns out, craftsmanship.

To do this the Directors, Writers and Producers, sailed closer to the wind as they stretched their brief to the limit, always believing that unresolved and unspecific messages would draw their audience into making their own conclusions… an early version of Inception: using a dream to inspire an idea which drives action. In doing so they left a lasting impression which resonates still as national (and personal) identity waxes and wanes… one of the most beautiful black and white films ever made.

Birds of prey

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…

Everything goes dark as a train leaves a small village station. “Next stop Canterbury” shouts acting station master Thomas Duckett (Charles Hawtrey), confusing one American GI, Sgt Bob Johnson (Sgt. John Sweet, US Army) who jumps off too late to realise his mistake. He banters with Duckett in the dark and meets Peter Gibbs (Dennis Price) and a young land girl Alison Smith (Sheila Sim).

Price, Sim and Sweet

As they head off to inform the local authorities of their arrival Alison is assaulted by a man who pours glue on her hair and makes his escape. This is surely one of the strangest plot devices in history but more in tune with the strange charm of the film than the original idea of cutting the women’s clothes… The Glue Man is a nuisance but he has his purpose and, in the context of the story, draws these three together in the kind of instant friendship you only get in the upheaval of wartime pragmatism.

At the Town Hall -  a studio recreation/re-imagining of Fordwich Town Hall – they have an interview with the local magistrate, Thomas Colpeper (Eric Portman) who is first encountered sitting behind his huge desk as the camera move upstairs up the medieval stairs.

Colpeper has an authority and intensity which tests the new arrival’s mettle, Bob responds with honesty and good humour to jibes about the cinematic past-times of his fellow GI’s but he knows about the Cathedral…

You can almost smell the sawdust...

It’s not hard to imagine the impact of the GI “invasion” on wartime Britain and the tension was such that one of the propagandist aims was 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 in the amateur John Sweet, Powell found a man of sensitive intellect who was naturally humble and respectful.

One of the extras on the Criterion Edition features an interview with Sweet in 2001…he is everything you’d expect and more: one really thought-through old man who spent most of his working life as a teacher. You can  be sure he made a very good one too.

Alison meets the locals

Sheila Sim was a thoroughly well-trained stage actress and this was also her first film, an experience made just that bit more testing as she was playing a role originally intended for Deborah Kerr with whom Powell was romantically entwined.

She does exceptionally well (Powell, perhaps conflicted by the absence of Kerr, said that it took him years to appreciate just how good Sim was) especially up against the magnificent, cerebral intensity of the experienced 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.

Bob's big room

Peter heads to camp and Alison and Bob are put up in the local pub, a giant facsimile of an Elizabethan ale house in which Bob’s room is the size of a small sports hall. They are in the very idea of England and it’s appropriate that the GI has the most of it…

The three begin to investigate the Glue Man and, Bob delays his departure to find out more.

Alison 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. Alison again stands up for herself as Bob bonds with the locals on the subject of timber. Turns out his family’s methods of lumber management aren’t so different from those used by the limeys.

"What wouldn't I give..."

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 Culpeper 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: Alison is a go-ahead girl… women were ready for the changes the War was to allow.

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.

Killing me softly...

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 maybe 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.

Peter engages with Colpeper

Dennis Price plays with his trademark mix of politely, diffident arrogance 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.

Alison begins to see

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.

As all parties travel to Canterbury Colpeper carefully debates the Glue Man’s case lined up against his three would-be accusers in a train carriage. This very English exchange masks everything in civility but Colpeper’s crime is taken very seriously by Peter in particular and, despite his positioning of the actions as a necessary evil, you sense Colpeper knows he has gone too far.

Canterbury bomb damage: "a better view of the Cathedral..."

No spoilers as you’ve either seen the film or will just have to see it to get the full meaning. Needless to say, a lot of things do happen in Canterbury to these modern pilgrims – unlike Chaucer’s originals who never quite got there in his story.

A Canterbury Tale is another deceptively complex film from Powell and Pressburger and rewards repeat viewing. This reflects the fact that they don’t throw the obvious propagandist shapes and leave the viewer hunting for the smuggled meaning…

Dennis Price reads the sheet music

The cast are wonderful and great credit has to go to John Sweet as the non-pro and to Powell who spotted something he was able to work with: natural integrity.

Dennis Price plays upper middle class semi-failure with good grace, the type of character that was to become his trademark but here on screen for the first time! This provides just the right mix with Sweet’s soldier-tourist who is finding his way in this strange environment in more ways than one.

Sgt. John Sweet, US Army

But I think Sheila Sim and Eric Portman are the film’s heart with their uncanny romance and barely-hidden inner conflicts - although I’ll give no credence to any suggestions of Portman’s personal life having any bearing on this: he was just a fantastic actor. Sheila Sim, in her 2006 interview, slightly underplays her achievement but she must have learned very quickly to make such an unqualified success of her transition from stage to screen.

The only shot of the cathedral interior: they weren't allowed to film...

Around these performers everything else is perfectly wrought.  The set design from former UFA stalwart Alfred Junge is expressionist and yet seamlessly attuned to the exterior work and Hillier must take a large part of the plaudits for that.

The action is also expertly underpinned by Allan Gray’s quirky and haunting score - it’s Powell and Pressburger music, it has to be…uplifting and unsettling when it wants to be.

Ultimately, 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.

I watched the Criterion edition which has a restored print and an excellent commentary from Archers specialist, Ian Christie. There’s a wealth of extras including interviews with John Sweet and Sheila Sim from 2006. There’s also Humphrey Jennings' seminal and subtle Listen to Britain propagandist documentary from 1941- a great influence on Powell who so deftly inter-weaved his magic with his realism.

It's available direct from the Criterion site.

Post script: Sheila Sim, now into her nineties, did indeed grow old in a place like Colpeper’s Georgian House, sharing this with husband Lord Richard Attenborough before their recent move to Denville Hall.

And, when I walk along the Roman road through Hoddesdonpark Wood or glimpse the cornfields from the paths at the edge of Highfield Woods in Hertfordshire, I know a little of what Alison and Colpeper knew…