MovieChat Forums > A Canterbury Tale (1949) Discussion > What's your favourite scene?

What's your favourite scene?


- I like the bit on the farm when Alison is trying to find out about the glueman and his victims
- the bit where Colpepper and Bob first meet
- when Bob is staying at the inn and the mirror keeps moving
- the "fight" in the village with all the local boys playing soldiers
- the little boy who has the order book under his coat (does he really say "that's awful" after he drinks his lemonade? (that's what it sounds like!)

and just the general haziness of the village and surrounding countryside....

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Alison climbing the hill with the view of Canterbury is my favorite (favourite) scene. Her dialogue with Colpeper is perfectly restrained. And of course, I love the blessings. The scene with the crusty old organist is marvelous and Alison's experience in Canterbury is powerful. Bob's blessing is simpler. There is a logical explanation, but that makes it no less a miracle. And Colpeper's blessing is to become invisible.

Sometimes I think I have seen more "old" films than anyone else alive, but I never had a favorite film until I saw A Canterbury Tale a couple of years ago. I wrote to John Sweet (Bob Johnson) and asked whether being in that film had affected him as emotionally as seeing it had affected me. He replied that he could never watch the film without remembering the making of it. Apparently, it was a challenge--hard work--and he didn't always please the director on the first take. But the scene with him in the wagon with Alison could hardly have been better. I wonder whether Alison (Lady Attenborough) would reply to a fan letter now. It's barely 63 years since she made the film.

Not often do I read opinions or reviews of A Canterbury Tale, but they usually mention the glueman plot and say that it fizzles out. That's the whole point of the picture. Because of their blessings, the three young people forget all about the glueman, and so should the viewer. The epiphany is in the miracles. The glueman was "the instrument," a term that Colpeper uses, and in his final scene he closes his eyes as if to fade away--his purpose fulfilled. Brilliant!

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"There is more that one way of getting close to your ancestors. Follow the Old Road and as you do, think of them; they climbed Chillingbourne Hill just as you did. They sweated and paused for breath just as you did today. And when you see the bluebells in the spring and the wild thyme, and the broom and the heather, you're only seeing what their eyes saw. You ford the same rivers, hear the same birds singing. And when you lie flat on your back and rest, and watch the clouds sailing as I often do, you're so close to those other people, that you can hear the thrumming of the hoofs of their horses, and the sound of the wheels on the road, and their laughter, and talk, and the music of the instruments they carried. And when I reach the bend in the road, where they too first saw the towers of Canterbury. I feel I have only to turn my head to see them on the road behind me."

A perfect expression of how close the past is in parts of England.


"Woof. In tones of low menace"

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[deleted]

I'm pleased to say it regularly gets shown on British TV, it's actually on again this coming Tuesday! (11 July on BBC2 at 1pm (GMT))

Really ?! Having watched just about every film from this period shown on terrestrial TV over the last 4 years, I've never seen it (until today) or seen it advertised.

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[deleted]

I have it on DVD (HMV did a Powell and Pressburger boxed set last year which included most of thir best films.)

Thanks for the tip about Dreadzone - I'll give it a listen.

I'm lucky enough to live in Kent and I visit Canterbury three or four times a year - the tea shop where Bob met his friend is now a Starbucks.

"Woof. In tones of low menace"

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and it's why I enjoy backpacking through rural Britain. The Weald Way http://www.highweald.org/ is a nice walk in that area.

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I just love the views of Holy Canterbury, thought of this film when I visited there.

Cry God for Harry, England and St George

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The lecture and that terrific speech someone helpfully included on this thread, what a splendid evocation of pastoral England and links with our country's past. It's a great thing if you just watched the film alone as I did to have the other feedback on this forum a terrific asset and a sharing experience and so astute comments on the whole. Thanks - Frank

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I love the scene with "Toccata & Fuga" from J.S.Bach in Canterbury Cathedral!
As I can remember, that deep and dramatic music had always touched my hearth and I like a lot Gothic Architecture, so when I saw that scene for the first time I was very affected! Black&white helps that moving feeling.

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Someone else (sorry, missed your name) picked out the shot of the hawk turning into a spitfire at the beginning, linking different eras. Is it just me, or does this remind anyone of the bone and the space-station in 2001?

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Yes, it does, and I think it's better than 2001's cut. I wonder if that was Kubrick's inspiration.

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Just the best film ever made
Andrew

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Just saw it on BBC2 last night. Although I missed the beginning, I found it compelling. Some of the dialogue is like epic verse and the film overall has a luminous, visionary quality. Beautiful and moving.

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The opening transition from Middle Ages to present day

Bob and Alison arriving in the village, and the glue attack in the dark - really sets the odd tone of the film

The early scenes in Colpepper's office. Beautifully photographed (as is the whole film, really, but this particular bit is like a painting)

Bob's discussion of wood-cutting with a farmer

Confronting Colpepper on the train

Alison finding the caravan again. That whole sense of buried time, I found it slightly spooky when I first saw this, slightly tipsy, on late night tv, back when I was a mere lad of 20. Now it makes me think of lives stuck in mothballs as the war broke out, hopefully to be resumed later (an image used by Lean at the end of Great Expectations - I remember some critic or suggesting he was deliberatly linking that to Britain emerging from the trauma of WWII)

The cathedral scenes

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[deleted]

No votes for the scene with Alison and Bob on the cart when they're talking about mail (and other things) that have been "lost by enemy action"?

I always find it hard to refrain from shedding a tear at that one.

But I agree with all the other choices as well. There are so many beautiful scenes in it it's impossible to pick just one

Steve

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The train to Canterbury scene. Portman's lament for a vanishing England echoes to the present day.

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The speech that someone quoted earlier about how our ancestors did and saw what we are doing and seeing... it makes a point that I find interesting about our lives today. In the long ago past, people lived their entire lives in a landscape, village, even a town, that did not change. The same farms, buildings, churches, schools... these remained the same during lifetimes. Now, you leave a city for a couple of years, and when you come back, the highways are different, buildings have been torn down and replaced, new housing developments have sprung up-- and this happens over and over again during one person's lifetime! I can't help but wonder if this is really healthy for us emotionally... I think life is moving way too fast!

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That's related to the message that a lot of people take from the film. Be aware of your past history, but you don't have to live in the past. The future will bring changes, drastic changes. But if you are well rooted in the present you can embrace those future changes and welcome them as you adapt to them

Steve

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You know this film is so mult-layered that it rewards much analysis of relating what's going on in the present to what went before in the past. The war, of course, is extremely important in understanding the film however the film for a modern audience I think has another reverberation and that is "What is the concept of England today?" Where does it reside in? Is it in the people who inhabit the country? Is it the stones and symbolic edifices that speak from the past? The England of the 21st century is vastly different from the 9th. I admire the positive viewpoint though I think change happens much quicker nowadays to a country than ever before. That, in turn, I think will play havoc on a country's identity and will bring challenges to the tenets we mull over while watching this great film.

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It is very much set in the war, but it is still applicable today.

We run a location walk every year (http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Trips/Canterbury/index.html and on the Criterion DVD) in the villages around Canterbury where they spend so much of the film and in Canterbury itself. They regularly attract 50-100 people of all ages.

Talking to them as we walk around they all have different reasons for being there and many of them are there because the message they get from the film is that you must understand and appreciate the past - but that doesn't mean you have to live in the past. You should look to the future but know where you came from and learn the lessons of the past.

Many English people (I'm half Welsh), especially those that write in national newspapers, seem to think there's a bit of an identity crisis for English people (as opposed to British people) at the moment. Maybe more of them should watch this film and learn a few lessons from it?

Steve

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Many English people (I'm half Welsh), especially those that write in national newspapers, seem to think there's a bit of an identity crisis for English people (as opposed to British people) at the moment. Maybe more of them should watch this film and learn a few lessons from it?


You know from a purely humanistic standpoint of the concept of "home" and "roots" they definitely can but from a cultural point of view I'd argue that there's much in England that has changed specifically demographics from the time the film was made and that can have some implications for perhaps understanding the themes inherent in ACT for a new set of citizens. Just an opinion. I don't know but I think in the next century the concept of an "English" and "American" will change and demographics will drive that change.

And I do hope to go on one of those tours one day...;-)...

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The Archers were multi-cultural before it became fashionable

Powell was an Englishman with a world view (very rare at the time). Pressburger was born in Hungary and came to Britain via Berlin, Paris and a few other places. He was the outsider, looking in, who could see things in the British character that we couldn't see ourselves. He became a British citizen/subject in 1946.

The way they worked was very cosmopolitan as well. Not just in the style of their films but in the people they worked with. Micky once said of Colonel Blimp:
"It's a 100% British film but it's photographed by a Frenchman, it's written by a Hungarian, the musical score is by a German Jew, the director was English, the man who did the costumes was a Czech; in other words, it was the kind of film that I've always worked on with a mixed crew of every nationality, no frontiers of any kind."

Steve

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The Archers were multi-cultural before it became fashionable


Absolutely and I hope ACT continues to project its themes for years to come all over the world.
PS Did you ever ask Mr Sweet to go on your touirs? I'd think that would be a great touch.

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We did ask him, and took him around the locations when he came to visit
http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Trips/Canterbury/20001010/index.html

Steve

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That's just fantastic...I missed all the writeups! I should write him here.

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Jason Radley: "Portman's lament for a vanishing England echoes to the present day." How true. And it is not merely England that is under attack, now, but the whole of Western civilisation, undermined from within by a combination of Cultural Marxism and free-market fundamentalism, and harried from without by resurgent Islam.

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Well they were under a greater threat in 1944, from Nazism. They survived that and I'm sure we can survive all the threats that you see assailing us

Steve

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Ah, a proto-Brexiter. Powell and Pressburger would have hated your paranoid, bigoted and closed world-view.

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Bob and Alison having a quiet smoke near the public payphone in the dark.

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Funny how these less than fantastic scenes grab our attention. Many film makers nowadays would cut or re shoot many of these 'duller' scenes. Anybody notice in the scene where the girl offers the coins to the museum as they await the repair of the projector, off to the right of the girl theres a Sgt. or Cpl. asleep in his chair ? A little bit o humor there - he caught my attention and I listened to her talk but watched him snooze, waiting to see if he'd wake up or someone would elbow him !

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It's part of the magic of this film, those scenes that are seemingly so inconsequential but add to the magical feeling of an idyllic time. You have to slow down to the pace of the film

Steve

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I have three:

- the argument at the beginning with the station master over whether or not he announced 'Canterbury next stop' before the train pulls out and the time of the next Canterbury train

- the children's war fight along the river

- the British Sergeant's conversation with the organist at Canterbury Catherdral, being invited to play and then pkaying Phantom of the Opera.

my vessel is magnificent and large and huge-ish

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the British Sergeant's conversation with the organist at Canterbury Cathedral, being invited to play and then playing Phantom of the Opera.

"Phantom of the Opera"? That was Bach's Toccata & Fugue in D minor
(It was then used in Ken Hill's stage version of The Phantom)

Steve

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