Submitted by
Neal Lofthouse
Shop for Your Films with Lionel Collier
From: Picturegoer
August 19, 1944
Released August 21
c** A Canterbury Tale
[Cast List]
As a travelogue on Canterbury, this meandering and sometimes quite
inexplicable, picaresque, comedy-drama has its points.
One had a feeling that at its end someone should have said : "And
so we say good-bye to Canterbury,
[In parody of the Fitzpatrick travelogues of the time]
and the unbalanced J.P. who put glue
on girl's heads to stop them going out with honest soldiers."
Frankly, I did not know what it was all about. I admired its
scenic properties and much of the acting was first class. But as to
the moral it had to point or the entertainment it was seeking to
provide, I was completely bewildered.
It deals very, very briefly with a farmer, a devout lover of the
countryside, who, in order to instil a love of his land to the troops,
an American included, and exorcise sex, went about putting glue on on
girls' hair and blaming it on the troops.
It's his hope to inculcate apparently sexless appreciation of the
beauties of Kent.
No, Mr. Powell, no Mr. Pressburger, it just does not work out.
Eric Portman is vaguely suspicious and pure-minded as the farmer,
but the acting honours go to John Sweet, a sergeant in the U.S. Army,
to whom all this fantastic tale seems strange: as well it might do.
Characteristics, however, are definitely good but the plot fails
to hold one's interest, except in a desultory manner.
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