A Canterbury tale

Written and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, acted by Eric Portman, Sheila Sim, Dennis Price and John Sweet. 1944.

Upon release this film set in rural Kent on the eve of D-Day was Powell and Pressburger's biggest commercial flop. The audiences of the time didn't care for its message or style.

Today, the film is entrancing and the most appealing of Powell and Pressburger's works -- The red shoes is too full of its own cleverness for my taste. Apart from the opening scene there is none of that in A Canterbury tale, just the simple story of men and women working in unusual times -- the last days of agricultural England and the last days of Fortress Britain. This is a small film, the tone set by the relationship between the characters rather than by the thin plot.

This has been my favorite movie since I saw it at the National Library in a Powell and Pressburger retrospective in the 1980s. If the ABC play it early one morning then it is well worth recording to play back on a listless summer's day, the pace being about the same as a cricket match.