A Canterbury Tale

Reposted from a long time ago....

A Canterbury Tale


I recently saw again a favourite film of mine, one I had not seen in ages: Michael Powell’s A Canterbury Tale, made in the UK in 1943. The opening sequence is a landmark: it shows a group of medieval pilgrims out of Chaucer, ends with a falconer releasing a hawk, which rises in the air, changing into a Spitfire which then comes down at the falconer, now wearing a helmet and an Army uniform. It was later stolen by Kubrick for the classic shot out of 2001, where the ape tosses up the bone and it comes down as a space station.

Now, this is in many ways a weird film: the central plot involves discovering “the glue man” who is dumping glue on the hair of women who dare stray out after dark, in order to deter them from dating those horrid Yank servicemen stationed all over Kent (where Powell was raised: he knows every inch of the Canterbury area, and it shows.) Never mind the bizarre silliness of the idea – Powell uses it, in my view, to tremendous, though highly idiosyncratic effect. For example, when the female lead (Sheila Sim, who would later become Lady Attenborough, is tremendously appealing as a doughty but vulnerable and damaged character) has her hair glued, there is a shot which closes with her head in a bucket, her hair being soaped and washed by five pairs of male hands. Weird.

Anyway, the reason for highlighting this is, as you might guess, the villain: Culpepper, played by the amazing Eric Portman. For subtlety, sympathy, attenuated charisma and threat – whose villainy is less and less obvious as the film goes on – you can’t do any better than Portman in this film.

I can’t say enough about how much I relate to this figure – not the vaguely creepy glue jobs, of course, but the twisted morals, the profound loneliness, the irony of being in a position of respect in his public life and reviled in his alter ego. Portman breathes into it a sadness so deep, an alienation so complete that you almost don’t see it at first.

It helps me (if I may flatter myself) that my speaking voice, altered for accent of course, is not that far away from Portman’s. His voice has the same smoothness as mine, although even his has a slight tang (not twang – I mean something acidic) to it that mine doesn’t.

If you want to see what my villainy is like – hell, you want to see what my real personality is like, watch the scene in this movie where Portman’s character is holding a lecture for the servicemen. It’s one of the most striking visual sequences in black and white film I have seen -- at times blatantly so, then turning to great subtlety in the blink of an eye.

If you do view it, I hope you can see the greatness behind the technical limitations of the time and the velly odd 1930s actor’s diction that comes out of Miss Sim (“Oh, end how dooo we dooo theyat, I wondah?”) I didn’t say she was sexy; I said she was extremely appealing. Oh, and please see the UK version, not the US version, with its moronic (though charming in its own obsolete way) bracketing story. Just like The Third Man – for Jah’s sake, see the UK version, for the US has a different opening voiceover that completely changes the tone of the film.