Made in black and white, it was the first of two collaborations between Powell & Pressburger and cinematographer Erwin Hillier. The film is a mixture of British realism and Hillier's German Expressionist style, and is notable for its depiction of the English landscape.
The story concerns three young people: a British soldier (Dennis Price), an American soldier (played by real-life G.I. John Sweet), and a 'Land Girl' (Sheila Sim). As the group arrive in a small Kent town, the girl is attacked by a mysterious assailant who has been putting glue into the hair of local girls. The three investigate the attack, and identify the culprit as a local magistrate (Eric Portman), a pillar of the community who gives history lectures to soldiers stationed in the district. They confront him, and discover that his motive is to prevent the soldiers from being distracted by female company. Meanwhile, their own attitudes to their surroundings are changing, and they decide not to reveal his guilt. On arriving in the city of Canterbury, devastated by wartime bombing, all three young people witness "miracles" of their own.
Geoffrey Chaucer began writing The CanterburyTales sometime around 1387 A.D.; the uncompleted manuscript was published in 1400, the year he died.
In the same way that The CanterburyTales gives modern readers a sense of the language at the time, the book also gives a rich, intricate tapestry of medieval social life, combining elements of all classes, from nobles to workers, from priests and nuns to drunkards and thieves.
Collections of stories were common in Chaucer’s time, and some still exist today, but the genius of The CanterburyTales is that the individual stories are presented in a continuing narrative, showing how all of the various pieces of life connect to one another.
The CanterburyTales, so far as they are in verse, have been printed without any abridgement or designed change in the sense.
The gaps thus made in the proseTales, however, are supplied by careful outlines of the omitted matter, so that the reader need be at no loss to comprehend the whole scope and sequence of the original.
I chose the CanterburyTales because I had heard that there were a few stories that had sexual innuendos and were thought to be inappropriate in schools.
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