Film Notes: A Canterbury Tale

A Canterbury Tale (1944) film notes by Tova Gannana for our Enchanted Evenings: The Boundless Cinema of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger series, running September to November 2024 at SIFF Cinema Egyptian. Follow Tova on Instagram: @tovagannana

The series is presented by The British Film Institute, SIFF, and Greg Olson Productions. Passes and tickets available now.

Alison Smith (Sheila Sims) wears her waist belted; her dresses and pants have large pockets. Her first line in A Canterbury Tale (1944) is a question: “Why do you think I need an escort?” Smith is routinely referred to as “girl.” She is directed, “Girl, you can come up now.” She is questioned, “Are you the girl?” Smith is in the Women’s Land Army and has come to Kent to work on a farm. Before becoming a “land girl”, she was a “shop girl” in London. “What was your job before the war?” Smith asks the blacksmith in Chillingsbourne, surrounded by a circle of men who look upon her with curiosity. He is sending her off with a cart and horse, but first he’s grilling her on blacksmithing terms. Smith says with confidence, “I was selling things in a store. I wonder how you would look behind a counter.” She’s tough, not bitter; tender, not brittle.

Sgt. Bob Johnson US Army (Sgt John Sweet Us Army) has a beautiful face and broken front teeth. He speaks as though he plays the straight man in the Sunday comics. Whatever he’s gone through in the war, he’s retained his boyishness. He still whistles, says “Gee,” has a sense of humor. “I’ll sit the next dance out,” he snaps back at the stationmaster as they collide after Johnson jumps onto the platform from a moving train. He’s from Oregon, and when asked by a British soldier if he knows his cousin who's moved to Montana, Johnson queries, “Is he a tall fellow?” He’s human, not folksy; kind, not sappy. Johnson calls Smith “Ma’am.” When they part, she tells him, “I shall miss being called ‘ma’am’.”

The identity of the “glue man” – a title earned by throwing glue on women’s hair at night in what is referred to as “the incidents,” of which there are eleven – is one mystery in the film. The first night that Smith is a target, she says, “It’s my hair. Somebody came out of nowhere and poured something on it.” In the town hall, Johnson and three other men scrub at her scalp with soap and hot water. The scene looks like a surrealist photograph: a woman’s head bent over a bucket, four men with their soapy hands in her hair.

In A Canterbury Tale, the term “war” is mentioned like telling time; there’s what you did before the war, and who you’ll be after. Smith is grieving. Her fiancé was a pilot who was downed by enemy fire. Johnson fears that his girlfriend in the States has moved on: “A ship might have gone down, the address might have been wrong, there are a hell of a lot of Johnsons in the army, maybe she was ill, maybe her mother was ill. I’ve had all the maybes. I cabled her, I haven’t heard a thing,” Johnson tells Smith as they talk about their troubles. They’re sharing, not complaining. It’s wartime, and Johnson has a few days’ leave.

Wartime, and Sgt. Peter Gibbs (Dennis Price) is stationed in the military camp outside Chillingsbourne. He was an organist at a cinema in London, earning 30 pounds a week, renting a flat. Together with Johnson and Smith in search of the “glue man,” the trio have fun. “That’s right!”: They smoke, they talk, they sleuth. There’s a war going on, but they’re out to catch one man. “Learn you not to run around at night,” the blacksmith tells Smith, to which she replies, “On the contrary: I shall go out every night til I catch him.” Gibbs and Johnson are on her side. Smith interviews other women who have been hit by the “glue man.” The glue is being used as a deterrent: to instill fear of going out at night, of mixing with soldiers newly stationed in Chillingsbourne.

It's wartime, and Chillingsbourne Magistrate Thomas Colpeper (Eric Portman) lectures a group of soldiers about the history of Kent: “I don’t know what you are in civil life. You might be cook, clerk, a doctor, a lawyer, a merchant. Let me remind you that as much as 600 years ago, doctors and lawyers and clerks and merchants were passing through here on the old road which we call the Pilgrims’ Way. These ancient pilgrims came to Canterbury to ask for a blessing or to do penance. You, I hope, are on your way to secure blessings for the future.” The beam from the projector frames Colpeper in a circle of light.

A Canterbury Tale opens with Chaucer’s prologue and 14th-century pilgrims. An eagle is released into the sky, then the shot changes to a fighter plane, an image of a gentleman changes into a soldier, Chaucer’s time to England’s wartime: “600 years have passed. What would they see, Chaucer and his goodly company today? The hills and valleys are the same. Gone are the forests since the enclosures came. Hedgerows have sprung. The land is under plow and orchards bloom with blossom on the bough. Sussex and Kent are like a garden fair, but sheep still graze upon the ridges there. The Pilgrim’s Way still winds around the weald, through wood and break and many a fertile field. But though so little’s changed since Chaucer’s day, another kind of pilgrim walks the way. Alas, when on our pilgrimage we wend, we modern pilgrims see no journey’s end. Gone are the ring of hooves, the creak of wheels. Down in the valley runs our road of steel. No genial host at sinking of the sun welcomes us in. Our journey’s just begun.” The new pilgrims are tanks, trains, soldiers, people on the move, in a rush. “Modern Pilgrims,” the narrator calls them.

But what of those who stay put? The women of Chillingsbourne are supposedly taught a lesson by way of humiliation. The children of Chillingsbourne form their own small armies. They hold mock battles, they collect salvage. They join Johnson, Gibbs, and Smith in tracking down the “glue man”, in which the rest of the town seems less interested. The way Johnson was hailed as the first American soldier to arrive in Chillingsbourne doesn’t become a symbol, but rather more of his own character. The women who are interviewed by Smith, while working in civic institutions, become less of a collection of incidents and more individual victims.

“If there’s such a thing as a soul, he must be here,” Smith tells Colpeper, as they sit on the hill that she last visited with her fiancé. Where is “here” for the modern pilgrim? Must it be a road? Must it be one that’s well traveled, with a past? Must it be recognized and visited? Will it lead from wartime to peacetime? May we come to whatever it is not only to do penance, but also for blessings.