A Canterbury Tale

This bucolic black-and-white masterpiece, turning 80 this year, is the most unassuming of war films. The fates of three characters – a young woman, an American soldier, and a British sergeant – intersect in the countryside, where they find themselves as 20th-century pilgrims heading for Canterbury. However, the enigmatic plot is not focused on a specific destination, but rather on a spiritual experience: the English landscape, community, the power of tradition in the face of modernity. Powell and Pressburger demonstrate how propagandist inclinations can produce a truly timeless work of art. Alexandra Harris wrote: “A Canterbury Tale belongs to a time when the celebration of deep England was, for many, a solace, motivation, and survival strategy. Villages were invoked, with passionate conviction on the part of urban and country people alike, as the shorthand answer to the great question ‘what we are fighting for?’” Despite this, the “mythic neo-realism” of the Archers, as Peter von Bagh described the film’s style, still manages to soothe and offer comfort.

Sebastian Smoliński