Submitted by
Mark Fuller
A Film Discovery
From: Evening Standard
13 May 1944
"A Canterbury Tale" (Odeon) is noteworthy because, British
though it is, it introduces a new American personality to the screen
in Sergt. John Sweet of the U.S. Army.
In this production by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger,
Sgt. Sweet plays the part of an American sergeant who is one of the
modern pilgrims to Canterbury. He has never appeared in films, but
in attractive manly qualities he has about 90% of Hollywood's male
stars beaten.
His simplicity, his homely drawl and the warmth of his
sympathetic personality impressed me from the moment he stumbles
out of a train in the black-out of a Kentish village.
Through his wondering eyes you perceive the tranquil beauties
and unfading wonders of the English scene, and the endearing
oddities of the British character.
These form the keynote of a film unusual in its exposition
of our less advertised qualities. The story is rambling, but it has
imagination, humour and beauty.
Sweet, who is 28, has been stationed in England for two
years. At home he was a schoolmaster, and he told me he wants
to return to his job when the war is over. If he does, films will lose
a real discovery.
The acting achieves perfection in some of the small parts -
notably in a beautifully written sequence in a woodworker's shed -
as well as those played by Sheila Sim as a land girl, Dennis Price
as a cinema organist turned soldier, and Eric Portman as a very
strange kind of local J.P. who, in pursuit of his ideals and his love
of England, behaves in a curiously magisterial way that would
justify treatment by a psychiatrist.
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