First off, don't even bother with this one if you have no patience for black & white films, and if the quirkier side of auteur film-making doesn't do it for you. I'll take a guess that if you liked "The Station Agent", you might just go for "A Canterbury Tale", recently released as part of a Powell & Pressburger DVD box set.
At first glance the various parts of this highly unusual film seem shoehorned in together, but "A Canterbury Tale" can be seen as a sort of genie in a bottle, where the more you watch, the more you see to love and admire. But it takes more than a cursory glance to see something more than just eccentricity in this sample of 1940's life in a small Kentish village. This film is about something more than forgotten village life, or Home Front life, or a Land Girl, or a subtle romance, or soldiers in wartime. It's about something more than a connection to the land, or the past, or religion. It's a complete bubble in time, but which has meaning, and which transcends 'period' clothing and black and white photography, and stiff accents.
The small pleasures of the film build progressively with the charm of the locale to invite you in, to make you care what happens to the lead characters. Some wonderful cinematic moments, no less than you'd expect from a Powell & Pressburger film: the Kent countryside, shimmering even in black and white; the GI greeted from his hotel window by a boy on top of a hay cart; the intensity of Colpeper as he talks about the Pilgrim's Way, and the way the light falls on the girl's face as she is drawn into his story; the marvellous Kentish accents – largely lost today; the moving shots of the majestic Canterbury cathedral, standing strong in the background of the empty, bomb-destroyed lots, with signs indicating what the businesses were – a town still alive despite the desolation. Ultimately I'm not quite sure I completely understood all of the message of the film; but there's enough that's unique and lovely to make this worth seeking out.
At first glance the various parts of this highly unusual film seem shoehorned in together, but "A Canterbury Tale" can be seen as a sort of genie in a bottle, where the more you watch, the more you see to love and admire. But it takes more than a cursory glance to see something more than just eccentricity in this sample of 1940's life in a small Kentish village. This film is about something more than forgotten village life, or Home Front life, or a Land Girl, or a subtle romance, or soldiers in wartime. It's about something more than a connection to the land, or the past, or religion. It's a complete bubble in time, but which has meaning, and which transcends 'period' clothing and black and white photography, and stiff accents.
The small pleasures of the film build progressively with the charm of the locale to invite you in, to make you care what happens to the lead characters. Some wonderful cinematic moments, no less than you'd expect from a Powell & Pressburger film: the Kent countryside, shimmering even in black and white; the GI greeted from his hotel window by a boy on top of a hay cart; the intensity of Colpeper as he talks about the Pilgrim's Way, and the way the light falls on the girl's face as she is drawn into his story; the marvellous Kentish accents – largely lost today; the moving shots of the majestic Canterbury cathedral, standing strong in the background of the empty, bomb-destroyed lots, with signs indicating what the businesses were – a town still alive despite the desolation. Ultimately I'm not quite sure I completely understood all of the message of the film; but there's enough that's unique and lovely to make this worth seeking out.