Submitted by
Mark Fuller
A Canterbury Tale (Odeon)
By Richard Winnington
From: News Chronicle
13 May 1944
Because they represent the only consistent unification of script,
production and direction in British films, Michael Powell and
Emeric Pressburger arouse expectancy and generally arrive at
something different and individual.
Their besetting weakness - lack of coherent purpose in
their stories - is more pronounced than ever in this their latest
product, which is also the first offering to the world of J.A. Rank's
Eagle-Lion Distributors Company.
Through the fog of a confused and at times vaguely
unpleasant story can be seen a steady though dim flicker of what
I think was the main idea of Powell and Pressburger - to endow
an accidental war-time excursion to Canterbury with the hushed,
bated magic of the Pilgrims' Way, to link in mystic suggestion the
past and the present.
And in an odd untidy sort of way they infuse a lyric feeling
into the pastoral progression of their film.
This quality of poetry is not entirely due to first-rate and
refreshing photographic compositions of the Kentish landscape,
or the "village pageant" sequences of Chaucer's pilgrims, or the
reading of part of his prologue with a modern bit added, or as I
have suggested, to the story.
This mostly concerns Eric Portman as a J.P. in the
questionable practice of throwing glue in girls' hair. Why? To
keep them away from soldiers on general moral grounds and
specifically and privately to reserve the troops as the
undistracted audience of his lantern lectures.
This murky, unexciting mystery is unravelled by the
three pilgrims, a British soldier (Dennis Price), a land-girl
(Sheila Sim) and most emphatically Sergeant John Sweet of
the U.S. Army. He is an untrained actor, discovered by Michael
Powell, and he is vividly alive and solid in a world that slips by
hazily like a dream.
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