I’ve just rewatched A Canterbury Tale, my favourite Powell and Pressburger film and one of my favourite films full stop.
I am always very wary of recommending it to people because it is so very weird. Set in the last years of WW2, the plot – such as it is – involves three ‘pilgrims’ who find themselves in a village in Kent. They are on their way to Canterbury and each, in their own way, is in need of a blessing. But in the village there is a mysterious ‘Glue Man’ on the loose, attacking women by pouring glue on their hair. The mystery of the identity of this assailant is about the least mysterious thing in the film. It’s obvious from the start. And why he does this makes no real sense frankly.
But that’s not really what the film is about. It’s really about England. And about history – how the past continually bears upon the present. It’s about the things which connect us all as human beings. It’s about mystery and the possibility of the miraculous. And it’s about beauty - especially the beauty of the countryside. Of course it’s idealised and romantic (and some of the scenes have not aged well at all) but there are moments of breath-takingly beautiful cinematography.
It speaks to me today because for four years now I have been struggling with a book about old churches - about why they were built, who built them and what they mean to all of us today. And this sense of beauty and mystery is exactly what I am struggling to capture in the book.
The cinematography also reminds me of Edwin Smith’s luminous and beautiful black and white photos of churches, taken around the same period, and found in the classic Thames and Hudson book English Parish Churches. They have the same sense of beauty and mystery, and even loss.
Edwin Smith: The vestry, St Lawrence, Didmarton, Gloucestershire