We had traveled from Australia to visit the ancient cathedral town of Canterbury in southeast England that has welcomed thousands of pilgrims since the Middle Ages.
We were on a pilgrimage—not a spiritual one but a cinematic one. We were there to pay homage to the film A Canterbury Tale made during World War 2 by the British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, which was filmed in the town and surrounding countryside.
Powell & Pressburger are considered master storytellers of the British cinema and worked in partnership between the 1940s and 1950s. In 1944, they filmed A Canterbury Tale. (This modern film should not to be confused with “The Canterbury Tales” of Geoffrey Chaucer from the fourteenth century, though the film’s title and themes pay tribute to this early work.)
On the afternoon of our arrival in Canterbury, we decided to walk into the center of town. I recognized some of the locations from the film: the ancient, gray stone Westgate Tower and the medieval precinct area with thin cobbled-stone streets and buildings with low thatched roofs. And, of course, at the heart of it all is Canterbury Cathedral, a glorious mix of Gothic and Romanesque architecture rising majestically above the town. It looks exactly like it did in the film. (The Cathedral’s stained glass windows were removed during the war to protect them, so this required some nifty special effects on the part of the filmmakers to make it look like the stained glass was still in place in the interior shots.) Today, Canterbury is an international tourist destination with wine bars, cafes, and gift shops, which makes it difficult to imagine what it was like during wartime, but the film records the real impact on the town.
Towards the end of the film, a main character gets lost in the center of Canterbury and asks for directions. In the background, we can clearly see the bomb sites and rubble where numerous buildings were destroyed. Canterbury was heavily bombed in what would become known as the ‘Baedeker Raids’ by the Luftwaffe on 1, June 1942. (The intention of the Nazis was to destroy the Cathedral but extraordinarily brave volunteers on the roof pushed the incendiary bombs off to be extinguished on the ground.)
A Canterbury Tale’s plot is eccentric but this is part of the film’s appeal. The story follows three strangers “pilgrims” during WWII, who are thrown together unexpectedly in a small village and decide to solve a bizarre crime and capture the perpetuator. A mysterious man is pelting glue on young women who arrive in the village, which discourages them from going out at night with soldiers from the nearby camp. The intrepid trio of detectives are: a dashing British Army Sergeant (actor Dennis Price), a laconic US Army Sergeant (actor John Sweet), and a young woman (actor Shelia Sim) who has volunteered to be a ‘Land Girl’ to support agricultural activities while the men are away at war. She is quietly grieving for the loss of her fiancé who, is presumed, lost in action.
The trio look for clues, gather evidence and solve the mystery but when they arrive in Canterbury to report the culprit’s crime to the police— they are mysteriously diverted with miraculous news and unexpected blessings. The girl’s missing fiancé has been found alive and safe in Gibraltar; the British Sergeant, a frustrated classical musician who plays a cinema organ, is given the opportunity to play the magnificent organ at the Cathedral before he is deployed to battle, and the American soldier receives letters that have been delayed from his girlfriend who has joined the WACs (Women’s Army Corp) and is stationed in distant Australia.
The three “pilgrims” lives are dramatically changed as they each receive a blessing in Canterbury. We are left to ponder whether this was just an accident or are these strangers chance acquaintance, in fact, part of a larger plan? Why did they found themselves together in such an unlikely time and place? Why was one of them delayed before journeying to Canterbury? One of my favorite moments in the movie is when the trio and the culprit are on the train to Canterbury and the accused man tries to explain his motives for the crimes. The British Sergeant reacts saying, “I’ll believe that when I see a halo round my head.” Just as he says it, the train passes into a patch of bright sunlight, backlighting him and giving the appearance of a halo. Is he an avenging angel in uniform? Is there some higher power at work connecting the pilgrims and the culprit on this journey? It is a perfect moment of movie making and theatrical panache that astonishes the viewer and gives the film a mystical quality that suffuses the rest of the film.
Canterbury Cathedral’s survival after the Luftwaffe bombing became an important symbol of Britain’s refusal to consider defeat. Powell & Pressburger’s film was meant to boost wartime morale and offer a moving paean to English life. The story never overtly uses Christian motifs (except at the end when the British Sergeant plays “Onward Christian Soldiers” as the other departing soldiers gather in the Cathedral for a service), but given that the Cathedral is the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion and seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury, it would be hard to use this film location and avoid any religious connotations. But the film isn’t proselytizing—it is about much more than religion.
Writer Xan Brooks eloquently expresses this,
A Canterbury Tale may be the most loving and tender film about England ever made. It’s a picture that’s steeped in nature, in thrall to myth and history; a re-affirmation of the English character, customs and countryside from a time when many viewers may have wondered whether this underpinning had been kicked clean away. But the film’s genius lies in the way it connects these big, sweeping themes to the intimate, the eccentric and the everyday.
A Canterbury Tale masterly combines the cinematic and the theatrical and is imbued with a quality of mysticism that connects us to England’s past and offers a poignant glimpse of the impact of the war on ordinary people. It shows how women were critical to the war effort and the surreal experience of being in the beauty and tranquility of the English countryside when London and other towns like Coventry and Canterbury were being bombed and people killed.
Three “pilgrims” unexpectedly find themselves solving a strange mystery that doesn’t follow any logic like the war. The story is a powerful reminder that we can’t foretell the future and how life’s blessings are often unpredictable. During a grave period of uncertainty, a medieval church became a symbol of a nation and a people’s endurance.
We were in a bar in Canterbury and the young man behind the counter asked why we were visiting? I told him that we were pilgrims and he looked intrigued, but then I explained that we were on a different type of pilgrimage. Had he ever heard of Powell & Pressburger’s A Canterbury Tale? He didn’t know the film, which wasn’t surprising given his age. So eighty years later, an American expatriate from Australia was sitting at a bar telling a young man a story about three “pilgrims” who visited Canterbury during WWII and about the making of the film. It was an improbable encounter but somehow perfectly appropriate for a pilgrimage in honor of two filmmakers and a film that continues to bring unexpected blessings.
