Friday, July 27, 2012

A Canterbury Tale – a great spiritual film for the incurable nastik

Preamble to an essay: In the Hindi cinema I grew up watching, the definition of “nastik” (atheist) was a hazy one. It never meant authentic, matter-of-fact nonbelief in God: that didn’t even seem to be an option. It was more a case of “bhagwaan se katti hoon” – I’m not on speaking terms with Him because He allowed bad things to happen to my family. Early in the Bachchan-starrer Nastik, little Shankar sulks and tells an idol “Aaj se mera-tera koi vaasta nahin.” But in the film’s climax, when God (or rather the gleaming, jewellery-studded statue that represents Him) shows belated willingness to help by impaling wicked Amjad Khan with a trident, everything is hunky-dory again and it’s back to waking up the neighborhood by clanging those old temple bells. This is a nicely self-serving version of faith, comparable to Pascal’s Wager, which places the “choice” of believing or disbelieving in the context of what one stands to gain or lose.

As you can tell, I don’t usually turn to 1980s Hindi movies for nuanced portrayals of religious faith (or its absence). However, even as a non-believer, there is a small group of “spiritual” films that I find interesting and provocative. These include the work of the Danish director Carl Dreyer (especially Day of Wrath, about a young woman accused of witchcraft) and Ingmar Bergman (who wrestled with the subject of faith throughout his career, notably in Winter Light). Occupying a very special place on the list is the British film A Canterbury Tale, made by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger during World War II. This is among my absolute favourite movies, and one that I’ve wanted to write about for a long time. What follows below is an attempt (note: this is a piece-in-progress, I intend to add to it over time – possibly as part of a larger project).

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Pilgrim’s progress

When I first became interested in the technicalities of moviemaking, one of my favourite extended sequences was the opening 15 minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, ending with the famous cut from a bone flung into the air to a spacecraft seen against the backdrop of outer space – a million years(?) in time bridged by the visual linking of two similarly shaped objects. Soon I learnt that this was called a “match cut” - that shot, along with a few other iconic movie scenes, was responsible for my choosing film editing as the subject for a sketchy and derivative post-grad thesis.

I was reminded of 2001 (and of my brief obsession with match cuts) when I watched the opening scene of A Canterbury Tale. The match cut here marks a shift of a “mere” 600 years, from the time of Chaucer’s pilgrims to the Second World War, and the cut is from a pilgrim’s hawk soaring across the sky to a fighter plane occupying the same space in the frame (a parallel link is established by two close-ups of a man watching from the ground, played by the same actor dressed first in 14th century clothes and then in a modern army uniform). The background in both time periods is the same – the English countryside, beautifully shot – but as the contemporary story begins and a tank lumbers into view, a voiceover drolly informs us that “another kind of pilgrim” is now on the move.





The Powell-Pressburger team had made propaganda films to boost wartime morale in the early 1940s, among them 49th Parallel, about a group of Nazis coming ashore in Canada and facing more resistance and courage than they bargained for. A Canterbury Tale does in a sense belong to that band of films – the war was very much on when it was made – but the ideas expressed here are subtler and more open to interpretation than in the earlier movies. The plot centres on - of all things - an attempt to discover the identity of a man who accosts young women late at night and pours glue into their hair. This has seemingly little to do with the big events concerning the world at the time, but by the time we arrive at the superb, graceful climax at the Canterbury cathedral it's evident that there is much going on beneath the surface of this strange story.

Most of the film is set in a small Kent town named Chillingbourne, a 10-minute train journey from Canterbury, and it begins with circumstances bringing three young people together at the station: a drawling American sergeant named Bob Johnson (played by a real-life soldier named John Sweets, who is something of an affable proto-Montgomery Clift), a “Land Girl” named Alison Smith (the spirited Sheila Sim) and a British sergeant Peter Gibbs (Dennis Price, who was so good in another of my favourite British films of the 1940s, Kind Hearts and Coronets). As they leave the station in pitch dark (blackouts being essential in wartime), Alison becomes the latest victim of the Glue Man. (If the reference to “sticky stuff” in her hair reminds you of There’s Something About Mary, congrats – you’re an eclectic movie buff.)

At this early stage the script is emphasising the differences between the Brits and the Americans, two ways of life (represented by the wide-eyed Bob Johnson in one corner and everyone else in the other corner) forced together by circumstance. Chillingbourne was established as a municipal borough in the year 1085, the station master says, pointedly adding for Johnson’s benefit, “407 years before Columbus discovered America”. When Bob takes out an extra-bright flashlight and starts waving it around, much to the horror of those around him, it becomes a display of American brashness, especially incongruous in this quiet little town. Later, a little boy points at him and calls out “This is an American soldier” as if he were identifying a rarely seen species of butterfly.


However, as the film continues, subtler schisms reveal themselves (and meanwhile the drawling Yank is turning into an enormously likable character). “This isn’t Chicago,” someone tells Bob at one point, perhaps naming one of the few American cities he has heard of – to which Bob quietly responds, “I come from Oregon.” Something similar occurs later when Peter, remarking on a tiny local river, says “I’ll admit it isn’t the Mississippi” and the American replies “I’ll admit I haven’t seen the Mississippi.” This is familiar cross-cultural discourse between people who think of other countries in terms of a few easily identifiable characteristics and landmarks, without realising how diverse those places can be. It is also, needless to say, a barrier to deeper understanding of another kind of life.

Slowly we realise that the contrast isn’t so much between two countries but between the city and the countryside and the types of lives they come to represent – and by extension, the difference between traditional and modern values. Thus, the girl from London can’t find common ground with her new employer, the town’s wheelwright, but the American soldier, being the son of a woodsman himself, can talk endlessly with him about different varieties of trees and cutting methods. (“We speak the same language,” he tells the girl, “I know about woods.”)

At other times the dialogue comments on the differences in the level of communal spirit to be found in big and small places. A town spinster has long resigned herself to being “a maid” because the only man who ever proposed to her lived in a big, soulless London house on one of those streets where “different kinds of unhappiness are packed close together”. When Alison asks a local, “Do you know Mr Colpeper?” she is met with an incredulous stare. “You’re from London, aren’t you?” he says. “Well, what if I asked do you know who the Lord Mayor of London is?”

“But I don’t,” she says innocently.

Speaking of Mr Colpeper...
 

Showing them the light

Colpeper, played by Eric Portman, is the film’s other major character – the town’s respected local magistrate (and a bachelor who lives in an incongruously big house with his mother). When we first see him, it’s an imperial shot of him sitting at his desk, two plump lightbulbs on either side of his head – and indeed, the film consistently uses light as a motif and symbol. When a night guard calls out to Colpeper “You’re showing a light, sir”, the context is that the magistrate – working late at night – hasn’t fully drawn one of the curtains in his study; but given what we learn later, the line can be seen as having a double meaning. In another scene, we see his head – in silhouette – against a circular light cast on a screen (he is showing a few short films and giving a talk about cultural heritage) and the result is a halo effect; this could be the Buddha speaking to his disciples about the interconnectedness of all things.

This initially distant figure soon becomes the most visible face of the film's moral complexities; one of the things that made A Canterbury Tale so compelling for me was the tension in my attitudes to Colpeper and what he stands for. He is a traditionalist, deeply attached to a pastoral way of life that is under threat in a modernising world, and this can be an attractive quality – one appreciates that he is close to nature and that he has a genuine respect for history. However, the flip side is that his view of progress is not very far from that of the religious fundamentalist; some of the things he seems to approve of are deeply discomfiting (unless you happen to be the sort of person who thinks dunking chairs should be used to keep “transgressing” women in check – and of course, many such people do exist even in seemingly modern families in our own society).


“I felt as a missionary must feel when the savages come to him,” Colpeper says, speaking of the opportunity he has to lecture a whole regiment of soldiers about the region’s glorious past. These scenes are genial enough, but one can never lose sight of how easily this sort of missionary-aspiration can turn into something unpleasant, especially if he were to be given power over others. (In this context, consider that Portman, who plays Colpeper with grace and dignity, also brought a certain charisma to the Nazi leader in 49th Parallel!) The Glue Man attacks, which are intended to keep young local women from staying out too late with visiting soldiers, are a short step away from a full-blown sexual assault – of the sort that a repressed man overly preoccupied with women’s “virtue” and “honour” is fully capable of. But Colpeper would certainly approve of them.

Yet he is also shown to be a melancholy man, capable of introspecting and acknowledging his mistakes – and he is a figure of sympathy because we know he is fighting a lost cause. At the end of the story, the young people will move on with their lives but this middle-aged man will return to his house and his old mother; the war will soon finish, the young soldiers (his “savages”) will return home, there will be no one left to attend his lectures; the world will change, centres of control will shift, more pragmatic and hard-edged ideologies will take over. Nearly seven decades after the film was made, now that we know that the milieu it depicted barely exists anymore, Colpeper’s nostalgia becomes more poignant and he himself becomes less threatening.

****


Colpeper’s nemesis within the narrative is the sardonic, probably agnostic Peter, and the two men have an exchange of words in a late scene set in a train taking the four main characters to Canterbury (where they will each experience a moment of benediction or self-awareness). There is a moment of Pure Cinema here that counts among my favourite movie scenes ever: the train pulls into the brightness of Canterbury station and Peter, sitting by the window, is ethereally lit up by the sunlight outside just as he says the words “I’ll believe that when I see a halo around my head.” This is such a magnificently conceived and executed shot that I feel stupid trying to describe it with bare words. It is also a lovely visual evocation of the idea that these people have entered a mystical realm; a place where “blessings are received, or penance done”, and where the usual rules don’t apply. (The best Powell-Pressburger films, such as A Matter of Life and Death, The Red Shoes and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, similarly combine an apparently realist plot with lovely otherworldly scenes.)


Peter is the least likely of the main characters to believe in miracles, and so it’s a nicely ironic touch that the halo effect is reserved for him - and also that he becomes something of an Angel of Mercy at the end. Of the four personal epiphanies shown in the film’s last 15 minutes, his is arguably the least dramatic - the story of a man who once wanted to be a church organist and ended up playing the organ in a movie theatre instead - but it’s the one I found the most moving. Dennis Price, who has the smallest role of the four main actors, comes into his own in this section, his flint-eyed determination to bring the Glue Man to justice slowly yielding to something more melancholy and introspective as he finds himself drawn into the church by a vagrant hymn sheet (a suggestion of mystical forces at work, or just the wind?) and towards the grand piano he has so long yearned to play. In contrast, the two “blessings” that await Allison and Bob were a little too pat for my liking, but they are treated with understatement.

A Canterbury Tale may seem to be a film that believes strongly in divine blessings and redemption (I don’t know what Powell-Pressburger’s own theological leanings were) but even the irreligious mind should have no trouble appreciating what Canterbury comes to represent for each of these characters. It can be seen as a place where one comes to make peace with oneself, finding solace by recalling the struggles of other people who lived centuries ago – and thus momentarily becoming part of something larger (something that doesn’t have to be supernatural). Seen this way, the towering cathedral isn’t so much a symbol of divinity but a venue for introspection and for the surfacing of finer feelings.

The cathedral is just behind the movie theatre, Colpeper tells Bob early in the film. He says it sarcastically – he’s bemused that the American is interested primarily in watching movies during his off-hours, rather than taking in the local culture. But I’ll plumb for a more personal interpretation of those words: going to a movie hall showing a good print of A Canterbury Tale would constitute a minor pilgrimage for me.
In its unshowy way, this film is incredibly insightful about things that should concern any thinking human being: how we live with each other, what values we deem worth holding on to and what should be let go of. There is more depth and complexity in its many graceful passages than in most of those dramatic scenes of our heroes berating or negotiating with their deities in moments of crisis.

44 comments:

  1. Have you read Coupland's "Life After God"? And more importantly are you on Mubi?

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  2. Sapera: no and no. Have seen the MUBI site a couple of times - not for long enough to work out what it's all about (being a Luddite etc), but I get the impression it involves streaming films? If so, I'm completely against watching movies on a computer screen and don't have the equipment necessary to transfer from comp to a big TV. If you have any useful suggestions, let me know.

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  3. I thought you weren't going to be prolific for a few months, but you have written fairly regularly.

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  4. MUBI is basically a nerdier, gentler and slightly more verbally erudite version of your average social networking site.

    It has dedicated profiles for films (like imdb) which you can favorite or put on a watchlist. Thus you have a comprehensive list of films that you want to watch at your fingertips(something I find hugely useful, when I have some time on my hand and am at a loss for what to do and have my wife's netflix handy).

    You can also post reviews of movies on their blogs (this would potentially be of limited appeal for you), read other's reviews, posts, opinions etc. You can also "follow" other MUBI users based on how much you like their taste. They in turn can turn you on to other films that they want to watch or have rated highly, etc.

    If you get on it (and we follow each other), I can for example see a list of all films that you have rated highly on a scale of 1 to 5, or films that you are intrigued by and want to watch in the future.

    It does offer streaming for some very rare films. Last month they were hosting Viennese Action Group films which were shorts (and excellent) anyway, so I didn't mind watching them on a small screen.

    It's also a very passionate and well informed community (ugh i sound like a shill), and I love reading the message boards when I have time.

    Sorry for such a long comment. I'm here, if you ever join: http://mubi.com/users/335264

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  5. Nice post.
    As I've said earlier, I don't think I will ever see a film like A Canterbury Tale again. A totally unique experience.

    It is a very "bold" movie. Which may seem like a strange thing to say because there is hardly any sex or romance in the film. Nor is there any violence or political propaganda. Yet the Archers are "bold" in their almost religious, irrational belief that there will be an audience for this peculiar film in an era when films were a genuine mass-medium.

    Today we live in an era where movies have ceased to be a mass obsession. There is less censorship. Greater tolerance of off-beat subjects. Yet I cannot conceive a film like Canterbury... being made!

    The movie is the antithesis of fashion in so many respects. Firstly you have this perfectly platonic relationship between a London girl and two young men. A rarity in 1943. A rarity even today.

    Secondly you have this extremely novel take on faith which goes far beyond the cliched "Does God exist" debate. The movie underscores the fact that a lot of consequential things that sustain us in our lives (be it family, romance or friendships) are not rational phenomena governed by legal contracts but by irrational quasi-religious faith in each other!

    A complete eradication of religious impulse is invariably attended by a loss of faith in human nature and a loss of hope in the possibilities of life. (This may not be true for a bunch of enlightened agnostics, but is true for the masses in general).

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  6. Shrikanth: thanks - I was hoping you'd weigh in. Btw, I hope that "bunch of enlightened agnostics" wasn't meant sarcastically. (I don't think it was, but still checking.)

    I'm not sure what "complete eradication of religious impulse" means, really - if such an eradication is to take place, it would have to be a gradual process, fuelled by education, reflection and exposure to different ways of thinking about the world and oneself. It wouldn't be like an abrupt surgical removal (with the attendant shock of having to suddenly deal with the loss of everything one held sacred).

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  7. The best Powell-Pressburger films, such as A Matter of Life and Death, The Red Shoes and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, similarly combine an apparently realist plot with lovely otherworldly scenes

    No doubt. The Archers are so very underrated and underwatched. I prefer them to David Lean's middlebrow art by a mile!

    Powell and Pressburger are proudly British with a rugged confidence in British values - something that is perhaps offputting for the rest of the world (including America) which is ungrateful and fashionably spiteful towards the mother country.

    I see this "anti-Britain" tendency everywhere - a tendency shown by the erstwhile colonized countries to rid themselves of the "colonial baggage". In India for instance you find more Hitler fans than Churchill fans among the youth!
    Elsewhere you have people looking down upon the novel as an anachronistic British innovation of the 18th century. You've cricket fans positioning T20 and IPL as India's answer to Test cricket which is snided at as an imperial imposition of sorts.

    Anything British is to be mocked upon almost as a patriotic duty! This is exactly what is shown in AMOLAD where Raymond Massey launches tirades against Britain in that heavenly court-cum-amphitheatre.

    I don't think the world realizes the extent to which the "modern world" owes its existence to that rainy little island on the North Atlantic sea. Or maybe they do. But don't want to acknowledge it.

    And yes. It can be very disconcerting for all these Britain-haters to see P&P films which are unabashedly pro-Britain.

    Sorry for the longish rant!

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  8. Btw, I hope that "bunch of enlightened agnostics" wasn't meant sarcastically. (I don't think it was, but still checking.)

    No. Not meant sarcastically :)

    if such an eradication is to take place, it would have to be a gradual process, fuelled by education, reflection and exposure to different ways of thinking about the world and oneself

    I don't think there can ever be such a gradual process. Europe is a classic example. Today Europe (including England) is a godless continent. The only godless continent on earth. This is the same Europe which was a very religious place barely 100 years ago. What caused this rather abrupt change. It was the two Wars. The so-called "World wars" were essentially European wars in which millions of white men lost their lives for no fault of their own. This shook people's belief in "conventional morality" - notions of what's right and what's wrong, notions of a moral code. It engendered the present nihilistic hedonism that's prevalent in Europe. A Europe where the foremost thing on most people's mind is - which country to visit for the month-long Christmas holidays?

    The Europe of 1900 had confidence in its own rightness. Its special place in the world. The Europe of 2012 is only interested in having a good time and living off the state as it were. This is a drastic change from 1900 - a change obviously accelerated by the rather abrupt loss of religiosity.

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  9. The Europe of 1900 had confidence in its own rightness. Its special place in the world. The Europe of 2012 is only interested in having a good time and living off the state as it were. This is a drastic change from 1900 - a change obviously accelerated by the rather abrupt loss of religiosity.

    Shrikanth: there are some pretty major generalisations and simplifications here, I think. Also, I wouldn't call 100 years a "very abrupt" change at all - it might seem a short period on a historical time-scale but you have to consider the relatively rapid advances that science has made in the last two centuries. That 100-year time-frame fits very easily within my idea of "gradual process" (as does even 5-10 years in the life-span of a thinking human being).

    And really, "nihilistic hedonism" as a sweeping description of the European condition? What would you call the frighteningly large population of young-earth creationists in the US? Not for the first time, it seems to me like we are on very opposite sides of the religion/spirituality debate.

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  10. The Europe of 1900 had confidence in its own rightness. Its special place in the world.

    Shrikanth, the more I read the above the more perplexed I am (while hoping that I may have misunderstood your meaning). In the above sentence you could easily replace "The Europe of 1900" with "White male homosapiens" or (in a more contemporary context) simply "Homosapiens". Would that confidence still be such an admirable thing? Would it be admirable if we replaced it with "Christian fundamentalists" or "Islamic fundamentalists"?

    Anyway, just to reiterate: I think it's a big, big mistake to suggest that a continent-sized group of (largely irreligious or relatively less religious) people lack a "moral code" - especially when we have as a reference point a much more religious country across the Atlantic, which thinks nothing of wreaking havoc in weaker parts of the world at regular intervals (with its leaders often resorting to a variant of "God is on our side" rhetoric on such occasions).

    I appreciate that you feel strongly about the role that religion/faith/spirituality must play as a balancing factor in human development, but I would advise you to think a little more carefully about some of the specific arguments you've made here.

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  11. Jai: It's difficult to word arguments perfectly in these comments spaces. So the odd line may seem odd :)

    I am not a religious person myself. So the last thing on my mind here is to defend religion here.

    My point was :
    The human need for religion / order / moral framework goes far beyond stuff like improvement in natural sciences. The loss of religion in Europe was indeed somewhat abrupt (between 1930-1960). The two Wars, Fascism, Communism and loss of empires did contribute greatly to this change in attitude. I am sure you agree on that. Europe today would've been a different place but for the two wars and all the violent political movements of the 30s.

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  12. Back to the topic - my original motivation was to better understand why P&P films are unfashionable today. To my mind it's because P&P represent the old order with all its certitudes and convictions. You can see that in Colonel Blimp and AMOLAD especially.

    In today's world where the only religion is the religion of "non-judgmentalism", the old order represented by the Archers is labeled quiantly British and too WASPish.

    That's why I brought up the point of Europe in 1900. You may squirm at the racist, sexist certitudes of that era. But the fact remains that the "modern world" we live in is an outcome of colonialism and imperialism. Be it the idea of rule by representative bodies like Parliament, the idea of equality before law, the idea of playing organized professional sport - these are all essentially British ideas which have moulded the modern world. Period. These ideas wouldn't have been universalized if the Hanoverian Brits were non-interventionists! It was their fundamentalist zeal and faith in their own rightness which created the modern world.

    P&P obviously acknowledge that and their enthusiasm for British values easily shines through in their films. But I suppose the rest of the world (which loves to hate Britain) finds it hard to enjoy their films which they conveniently label as "propaganda".

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  13. Jai: While we are on this subject, here's a column from David Brooks that I highly recommend.

    A wonderfully perceptive comparison of the multicultural, meritocratic elite of today with the priggish, racist WASP elite of 1900.

    Some wonderful extracts I can't resist quoting :

    The problem is that today’s meritocratic elites cannot admit to themselves that they are elites.
    Everybody thinks they are countercultural rebels, insurgents against the true establishment, which is always somewhere else.
    As a result, today’s elite lacks the self-conscious leadership ethos that the racist, sexist and anti-Semitic old boys’ network did possess....The best of the WASP elites had a stewardship mentality... They cruelly ostracized people who did not live up to their codes of gentlemanly conduct and scrupulosity...Today’s elite is more talented and open but lacks a self-conscious leadership code. The language of meritocracy has eclipsed the language of morality


    I am reminded of this when I watch P&P films. The likes of Colonel Blimp or Colpeper represent the old elite, warts and all. They don't have a counterpart today because the word "elite" is a dirty word in the 21st century.

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  14. Shrikanth: thanks for the link. Haven't read the column yet - have bookmarked it - but I like those excerpts very much. I suppose an inevitable by-product of losing a sense of centrality (or accepting that everything isn't governed by larger patterns) is that one avoids taking on responsibility.

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  15. Jai: This is regarding the aside on Canterbury Tale on the Vandana Singh post.

    I saw that you objected to this line of mine -

    It is indeed a sign of our times that we regard the "Glueman" as an abomination. But at the same time accept lustful foreign soldiers impregnating uneducated village belles as a sign of modernity!

    I think what's often overlooked is that this film is very much addressing an issue which was indeed a big deal back in the early 40s. The amorous exploits of soldiers and their deleterious consequences on the smitten women is as old as the history of civilization. One can go back to the days of Genghiz Khan to find parallels to the situation in Chillingbourne.

    Even during the 30s-40s, this was a very real issue. Accounts of the famous Rape of Nanking or the exploits of American soldiers in Japan suggest P&P are discussing a very real problem here. It is a problem for the simple reason that the fairer sex is severely handicapped in its interactions with foreign nationals (who, for all practical purposes, have the licence to kill in wartime!)

    There are other Hollywood films which deal with this issue. The most famous one being The Miracle of Morgan's Creek. Other films which deal with the same issue more subtly are Mitchell Leisen's To Each his Own which was remade in Hindi as Aradhana!

    Yet what I observe is that in all discussions of A Canterbury Tale, all I find is discussions of Colpeper's admittedly brusque methods but absolutely no discussion of the very real social menace engendered by wartime conditions in the 40s!
    Chillingbourne isn't Woody Allen's Manhattan where highly educated, frustrated young people can initiate and break affairs with gay abandon with no consequences!

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  16. Thanks, Shrikanth - that's a good clarification of what you meant. My main point is that one should be very wary of idealising the Glue Man's actions - as I mentioned in the post, that particular form of concern about women's "honour" is often very closely tied to sexual repression and the potential for sexual violence. (To quote King Lear: "The policeman who lashes the whore has a hot need to use her for the very offense for which he plies the lash.") It also ties closely to an inability to see women as human beings and instead to classify them as either Goddess or Whore. (This, I think, is movingly addressed in the film, where Colpeper seems to be looking at Alison as if he is really seeing her for the first time, and where he says something like "I misjudged you.")

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  17. Jai, got to this a little late.

    Firstly, thanks for writing about my favorite director. There can never be too few PnP movies being raved about :-)

    Now to ACT & your post. So my biggest reason for liking ACT isn't the religious feeling that it arouses, but that it shows that even if a country is under attack, it is still breathes & lives. Like the women out after dark in Canterbury, England doesn't lurk in the shadows as the German bombers make their nightly raids (imagine Colpepper as a Hitler figure obsessed with purity, especially non-Anglican Yanks corrupting the British lasses) but go about their business & continue to live as human beings. Eat, pray & love indeed. So with 49th Parallel & Blimp, it stands as a great example to the commonwealth of why we fight & what we are trying to save. Perhaps Danny Boyle should have used clips from those films, & A Matter Of Life & Death, for the Olympics opening ceremony.

    Isn't it obvious that Dennis Price is Powell's favorite actor? He gets the halo & the spine tingling organ finale.

    I also loved your line - "The best Powell-Pressburger films, such as A Matter of Life and Death, The Red Shoes and The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, similarly combine an apparently realist plot with lovely otherworldly scenes." That's the reason those are my favorite movies.

    A criminally underseen film, & don't be hating me, but I did manage to see a pristine print of this on a big screen at Palo Alto a few years back :-) I let out a loud cry of Jai Mata Di as I went in! Ten years back when I was in London the wife & I made our own pilgrimage to Canterbury. The guide showed us the spot where Death In The Cathedral happened, but didn't seem to know much about ACT, or that Powell himself was a Kent lad. When we came out we saw a Starbucks sharing a wall with the cathedral, which put me back to Earth very quickly.

    Btw, a friend of mine runs a website for all things PnP. Check out the ACT section - http://www.powell-pressburger.org/Reviews/44_ACT/index.html, & about the Canterbury walk that the surviving cast members & fans do every year (including Sheila Sim & her husband Richard Attenborough).

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  18. @ Shrikanth: Back to the topic - my original motivation was to better understand why P&P films are unfashionable today. To my mind it's because P&P represent the old order with all its certitudes and convictions. You can see that in Colonel Blimp and AMOLAD especially.

    Couldn't disagree more. P&P films are as fashionable today as any film of that era with similar quality - Hawks, Renoir, Capra etc. They are referenced quite frequently in popular culture (eg. when Black Swan was released). They are nowhere near Hitchcock's fame, but who is.

    Also, I don't think P&P represents the old order at all. A Matter Of Life & Death is all about the young lovers (Niven & Hunter), Blimp is about Deborah Kerr in her avatars, ACT about the 4 pilgrims, Edge Of The World about the moving to a new land, Gone To Earth & Red Shoes are about how the old order's (Cyril Cusack & Anton Walbrook respectively) manipulation leads to disaster. They are the most modern & anti-establishment of filmmakers.

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  19. Tipu: I adore P&P. But I wouldn't regard them as "modern" or "anti-establishment" to make their case.
    I don't think those attributes are unqualified virtues anyway.

    P&P's worldview is very much the world view of a 19th century British intellectual (be it Whig or Tory). Firstly there is this sturdy belief that Britain is usually in the right. A belief in the value of diversity. A distrust for centralizing officialdom (AMOLAD's heaven for instance). A faith in the wisdom and intentions of the old order (Blimp and ACT).

    None of these characteristics are shared by the "anti-Establishment" left wing crowd of today! Today's liberals are more akin to Raymond Massey in AMOLAD (cliched, unintelligent and too keen to pin the blame for all the world's ills on Britain and its empire!)

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  20. that particular form of concern about women's "honour" is often very closely tied to sexual repression and the potential for sexual violence

    Maybe. But I doubt if that's the case with Colpeper. He may be a conservative man with the odd hang-up with women. But that doesn't mean he's "repressed" or capable of "sexual violence". To think so is to fall prey to the "modernist" cliche - "If a grown man isn't married or doesn't have a girl friend, he must be either gay or....that dreaded word - repressed".

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  21. Oh well, it's a question of interpretation and perspective, I guess. As long as we agree that there is (at the very least) a lot of moral ambiguity in the Glue Man's methods. And not to get too auteur-ish about it, but Powell did have an interest in characters whose attitude to sexuality was stunted or unhealthy. (Remember Mark in Peeping Tom, with Powell himself playing the sadistic father in the flashback sequences?)

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  22. I've been rewatching ACT.
    There's one snatch of dialogue midway through the film which leaves us with no doubt regarding P&P's political leanings....

    Sgt Johnson: If the isolationists were to hear you back home they'll be mighty sore.
    Kid1: Who are the "isolationists"?
    Sgt Johnson: Short-sighted folks
    Kid2: Why don't they buy spectacles?
    Sgt Johnson: From what I hear, that's what they are doing!

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  23. Tipu: thanks for that link. Somehow I didn't realise that Attenborough was still alive. (Didn't he meet Sheila Sim on the sets of A Canterbury Tale, or am I mistaken about that? I know he played a small role in A Matter of Life and Death.)

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  24. Shrikanth: like I said, it's a question of interpretation. For me personally, P&P's work would be diminished if there was absolutely "no doubt" about their leanings - I think there is a moral tension underlying all their major films.

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  25. Here's a comment - sent on email - by my friend Mike, a hugely informed movie buff. Perhaps he'll weigh in on some of the other discussion here.

    -----

    Jai - I had to break my long silence to comment on your "Canterbury Tale" piece, one of the best takes on Powell-Pressburger I've ever read. I was fortunate enough to first see "Canterbury" in an Archers retrospective at the Film Forum in NYC, a temple to film. Michael Powell and his wife Thelma Schoonmaker were there for many of the shows; this was near the end of Powell's life when Martin Scorcese was attempting to raise his profile.

    At the same retrospective I saw all the major Archer's work: "Colonel Blimp," "A Matter of Life and Death," "The Small Back Room," "Gone to Earth," "The Red Shoes," "Black Narcissus," (I took Carolyn to that one; it was the first time we ever went out together) and my own favorite Archer's production, "I Know Where I'm Going." I was already a fan of "Peeping Tom," "Night Ambush" (aka "Ill Met by Moonlight"), "The Battle of the River Platte" (aka "Pursuit of the Graf Spee" ), and "A Matter of Life and Death" (aka "Stairway to Heaven") from television, along with IKWIG (Indian-style movie acronym) and "Black Narcissus." To see them all in a theatre for the first time was wonderful; I went day after day at a time when I could walk to Greenwich Village in twenty minutes.

    As a kid, I remember my excitement whenever I saw that Archers logo; I knew the movie would be quirky, great, and beautiful. Powell has one the best eyes cinema has ever produced. There is very little to compare to "Narcissus" (I just got the Blu-ray) and "Red Shoes." And Pressburger is always quirky, his scripts unusual in the same way that the work of his fellow Hungarians the Kordas was unusual. He was a great humanist; like Renoir, he sympathizes with everyone. In fact, a lot of the comments you've made on "Canterbury" could be made about "Rules of the Game." There is rarely a bad guy in a Pressburger script. He thinks about humans, understands what they feel, mourns their loss, celebrates their vitality.

    Together Powell and Pressburger are the most quintessentially British -- and at the same time, the most authentically European -- English filmmakers.

    In the second part of Powell's autobiography, "Million Dollar Movie", (he signed my copy at a matinee) he details how he became persona non grata in the industry after "Peeping Tom." (He and Pressburger had amicably parted by then.) In addition to the critical hostility that misunderstood film engendered (I think "Red Shoes" fanatics were outraged that he killed off Moria Shearer), I also think his elaborately stylized films were just going out of style. "Peeping Tom" came out just a few months after "Psycho": modern cinema had begun. (There is a famous telegram Powell sent to Hitch after seeing "Psycho": "Congratulations on your new comedy.")

    There is one late and very interesting coda to Powell's career, a 1969 Australian picture called "Age of Consent." It was one of James Mason's last pictures, Powell's second to last, and Helen Mirren's first. It's a bit of a mess but very enjoyable, particularly when 22-year-old Helen swims naked underwater (the first of many nude scenes for that gorgeous actress).

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  26. Jai: A few more lines uttered by Colpeper which reveal more about the man.

    Alison: They were a good family. He thought his son should marry someone better than a shopgirl.
    Colpeper : Good Family. Shop Girl. Rather dilapidated phrases in wartime.
    ..
    ..
    Colpeper: When I was your age I didn't believe in anything. Now I believe in miracles.
    Alison: For Shop girls?
    Colpeper: I think a shop girl has a better chance of a miracle than a millionaire.
    ..
    ..
    Alison: I pay half-a-crown a week to keep up the caravan.
    Colpeper: Quite a lot for a jacked up Caravan.

    These lines reveal so much.
    Colpeper is very much a man of the world. An intelligent man. If anything he is an enlightened conservative as opposed to some village nincompoop whose conservatism derives from a lack of knowledge of the world.

    Also this conversation with Alison (to me, one of the highlights of the film) happens in the wide open spaces on a huge untended grass field. You wouldn't expect a sexually repressed single person to have a perfectly normal conversation without a trace of self-consciousness with a nice attractive girl in such a setting.
    The Platonic nature of friendships in this film amazes me. Truly a rarity in the oversexed world we live in.

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  27. Shrikanth: points taken, though I think it is made reasonably obvious that Colpeper is attracted to Alison during that conversation in the field (one of my favourite scenes too) - and there is a definite element of disappointment later on when he learns that her fiance is alive; it's reflected in the dialogue too. Not that this affects anything you've said here.

    Anyway, I think it's important to remain wary of Colpeper and the things he stands for, and to at least recognise where those beliefs and actions might lead given the right (or wrong) circumstances. The lines you've quoted do show him in a fine light, but one can equally bring up his remark about the dunking chair (for example). Like I said, one of the things that's so great about this film is how it makes us deeply ambivalent about him - and, by extension, perhaps more aware of the dualities in our own attitudes.

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  28. P&P films are as fashionable today as any film of that era with similar quality - Hawks, Renoir, Capra etc

    I am not sure I agree.
    Capra is fashionable yes. Because he has this populist veneer (Mr Smith, IAWL). Those films are quite rich thematically, but the veneer ensures their popularity and accessibility.

    Renoir is actually underwatched. His understated mature films have been overshadowed by the more experimental French new wave directors in the popular imagination (by popular - I mean the average film buff).

    Hawks is also underwatched. His remarkable treatment of women in his films (unique in cinema) is underappreciated. A Michael Curtiz film like Casablanca or a Stevens film like Giant have a far bigger audience today than say Hawks' Only Angels have Wings - one of the greatest films ever to come out of Hollywood.

    As far as Archers are concerned, the number of people who have watched AMOLAD or Colonel Blimp is probably a small fraction of the number who have watched Brief Encounter or Lawrence of Arabia

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  29. I think it's important to remain wary of Colpeper and the things he stands for, and to at least recognise where those beliefs and actions might lead given the right (or wrong) circumstances

    Fair enough. There's enough ambivalence in the film. One of the best lines being Sgt Johnson's when he talks about the Old Butler killing the fly on the baby's head with a sledgehammer!

    To my mind that sums up Colpeper. An eccentric man but not really evil. Also our perception of Colpeper may be overly influenced by his social milieu - the fact that he is a gentleman farmer. We in India think farmers are an insular lot.

    But the caste of gentleman farmers has traditionally been anything but insular in Great Britain. It was well-to-do farmers like Colpeper who triggered the Agricultural Revolution in Britain back in the 17th century (Jethro Tull for instance, after whom music band has been named!)

    Unlike a lot of other countres, the "Enlightenment" in Britain did not emanate only from the middle-class bourgeoisie but across all sections of society, way back in the 17th century. That's what made Britain the first "modern" nation. It is strange that this very country - the birthplace of most things modern, is labeled quaint and "old world" by the arriviste modernists from elsewhere.

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  30. More nuggets from the film -

    Colpeper on the train: A Pilgrimage can be either to receive a blessing or to do penance.

    He says that when Peter Gibb wonders why Colpeper is in Canterbury.

    A line which clearly suggests that Colpeper despite his tough exterior and moral high-ground is self-critical and understands the inappropriateness of his conduct!

    In contrast to Colpeper, Gibb blithely declares - I don't need to do either (no need for blessings or penance). Contrasting attitudes. It illustrates Brooks' brilliant line in that column I linked to - "The language of meritocracy is eclipsing the language of morality"

    In the same scene, Colpeper asks each of them - "Are you against the Glueman".

    Alison answers - "A lot of people in the village are not against him".

    Ofcourse this doesn't mean she condones him. It illustrates a maturity that belies her age. Her judgment of right and wrong is not based on dogmatic moral principles. But in the best tradition of English common law, she tries to understand the broader stakeholders involved and notes that Glueman's actions will not be lacking supporters in the town. There is no love or hate towards the Glueman here. But a genuine attempt to understand him. (Only Peter Gibb in his somewhat un-English dogmatic zeal lacks this understanding).

    All this reminds me of Oliver Wendell Holmes' brilliant line -

    "The Life of the law is not one of logic, but of experience".

    A classic defence of common law tradition.

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  31. A line which clearly suggests that Colpeper despite his tough exterior and moral high-ground is self-critical and understands the inappropriateness of his conduct!

    Shrikanth: yes, but even before this scene it has been made evident that Colpeper is feeling contrite - not about his Glue Man adventures in general, but about having targeted Alison (who, he has realised, is a "good" girl who shares at least some of his values).

    If we're really analysing everything deeply (and we are now, in this space), I think there's plenty of moral ambiguity there. One can point out that the very first time the Glue Man gets to have a proper conversation with one of his victims, he realises that he was mistaken about her. It is, of course, to his credit that he acknowledges this, but one might reasonably ask the question: might he have been similarly mistaken about some of the other girls? Might his conservatism have led him to make sweeping judgements about young people? And why should we assume that all (or most) of those nighttime liaisons are cases of soldiers taking advantage of innocent village girls? What about consensual relationships? Doesn't this ring disturbingly close to a certain conservative mindset we see in our society about the need to protect a girl's "honour" without actually consulting her - treating her like an object, in other words?

    "Understanding" the Glue Man is all very well, but I don't think his actions are worth endorsing.

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  32. And just as I posted that last comment, the power came back on (after this huge blackout that struck half the country today). That Colpeper sure knows how to "show a light", doesn't he?

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  33. And why should we assume that all (or most) of those nighttime liaisons are cases of soldiers taking advantage of innocent village girls? What about consensual relationships?

    I am only providing a necessary counterpoint to most other readers of the film who blithely buy this idea that Colpeper is this evil character who is not letting Juliets have fun with their soldier Romeos, while completely ignoring the realities of the 40s.
    As I said earlier Chillingbourne isn't Woody Allen's Manhattan.

    Even in the present enlightened age we have a very massive teenage pregnancy problem in the States (notwithstanding all the education and mass media exposure). Just goes to show how tradition and positive peer-influence is far more effective than "education" in encouraging good habits among youth.

    Again what I'm saying makes no sense from the standpoint of abstract logic. But makes ample sense from the standpoint of plain experience. That Oliver Wendell Holmes line gets more brilliant every time I read it.

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  34. I am only providing a necessary counterpoint to most other readers of the film who blithely buy this idea that Colpeper is this evil character who is not letting Juliets have fun with their soldier Romeos, while completely ignoring the realities of the 40s

    Shrikanth: in the last couple of days I've been going through some write-ups on ACT (partly through that link Tipu provided) and I think you and I have been reading very different things. Every well-written piece I've read acknowledges the complexities of the film and of Colpeper - definitely not typecasting him as a villain.

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  35. There's a fascinating quote by Michael Powell on this link, by the way - it should be befuddling for anyone who loves the film and sees it as truly English. Excerpt:

    "With A Canterbury Tale I had doubts because the script had a wonderful idea - this man who cares so much about truth and beauty that he has to act for it, even on pain of being regarded as some sort of lunatic for what he does - but it was a Continental idea that did not fit into an English film. If I was going to make an English film with it at all, I should have done more with it, translated it more. But I didn't. I filmed it straight and the result was a tremendous flop."

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  36. Shrikanth, responding to couple of your earlier comments:

    - None of these characteristics are shared by the "anti-Establishment" left wing crowd of today! Today's liberals are more akin to Raymond Massey in AMOLAD (cliched, unintelligent and too keen to pin the blame for all the world's ills on Britain and its empire!)

    I hope you are not comparing a movie from the 40's with political mores of today. You can't blame for Powell for not predicting what people are like today. Also, not sure about the characteristics of today's liberals, but what you wrote in your second sentence sounds a lot like those deshbhakt commentators on Cricinfo responding to stories about some new embarrassing BCCI intransigence :-)

    Btw, about the fashionableness of certain moviemakers, I think in movie fan circles, the likes of Capra, Renoir & Hawks are always popular. For example, where I live, there have been 2 major retrospectives of Hawks movies in the last year. You can see similar film events in New York or London. More than sale of home videos or Netflix streaming, I think these are better indicators of a filmmaker's significance today. Similarly with Powell, recent restorations of Red Shoes & Blimp & a documentary about Jack Cardiff (his longtime cinematographer) have made new generations familar with their work.

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  37. Shrikanth: in the last couple of days I've been going through some write-ups on ACT (partly through that link Tipu provided) and I think you and I have been reading very different things

    I always make it a point to see how the "junta" is perceiving the film, as opposed to the critics. The best place is IMDB. There's no better place to get a sniff of contemporary public opinion. What I find in most reviews over there is a certain bemusement at Colpeper the character. However not one person talks about the very real social issue addressed by the film (that of extremely rooted girls romancing deracinated stranger soldiers from a foreign country - a situation fraught with all sorts of dangers).

    It's this inability to take off one's Manhattan lenses while examining the situation in an English town of the 40s that bothers me. The fact that it doesn't bother most people around me is a sign of our times - an era more obsessed with "abstract principles" as opposed to the dirty ground realities.

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  38. I hope you are not comparing a movie from the 40's with political mores of today. You can't blame for Powell for not predicting what people are like today. Also, not sure about the characteristics of today's liberals, but what you wrote in your second sentence sounds a lot like those deshbhakt commentators on Cricinfo

    I did no such comparison. I was responding to your observation that the Archers are "modern" and "anti-establishment" which I don't think they are.

    Movies like Colonel Blimp or ACT are anything but "anti-establishment". These are very much films with a conservative world view. Not radical by any means. And I'm perfectly fine with that. Unlike a lot of other viewers I don't reflexively regard "radicalism" as a virtue and "conservatism" as a vice.

    AMOLAD is probably the one film that's closest to being radical among P&P films. However even in that film, you have that immortal court-room argument between Massey and Livesey - where Livesey's argument emphasises dialogue and deliberation, shuns dogma and is generally pro-Britain. Massey, in the early Puritan tradition (the precursors of modern Whigs and liberals) embraces dogma, shuns deliberation and is not at all appreciative of Britain's contribution to the world. (a characteristic common with most Anglophobe liberals across the world even today).

    Oh. And I don't think I am in the same parish as Cricinfo's deshbhakt commentators. First of all I am not talking about my "desh" over here. Most of those deshbhakts would accuse me of being a "Macaulay-putra" if they were to read my comments here. I plead guilty heartily.

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  39. I think in movie fan circles, the likes of Capra, Renoir & Hawks are always popular. For example, where I live, there have been 2 major retrospectives of Hawks movies in the last year. You can see similar film events in New York or London. More than sale of home videos or Netflix streaming, I think these are better indicators of a filmmaker's significance today.

    Ofcourse. I am not saying that these guys are not watched by anybody or are LOST like some obscure directors like Budd Boetticher or Ida Lupino.
    I am talking in relative terms.

    A film like Brief Encounter has three times as many votes on IMDB as Life and Death of Colonel Blimp. You may regard it as too populist to take IMDB seriously. But that's the best place to gauge how popular is a film across the world.

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  40. If I was going to make an English film with it at all, I should have done more with it, translated it more. But I didn't. I filmed it straight and the result was a tremendous flop

    I think there is an assumption here that a film like ACT would've been a Continental hit but was bound to flop anywhere in the Anglosphere.

    I am not sure Powell is right in that supposition.

    Lots of English hits of the 30s were "filmed straight" without much translation. The most obvious examples being Hitchcock thrillers like 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes. Hitchcock stopped making such "straight" thrillers once he moved to America.

    Ofcourse ACT is a more challenging film than those titles I mentioned. But that holds true no matter where you film it. No reason to suppose a Paris audience would've been kinder to it than a London audience.

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  41. My! So much of this discussion is political. I would only like to make one point: despite the huge profile he enjoys (thanks to the NY Times and National Public Radio), David Brooks is an idiot.

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  42. Shrikanth, regarding iMDB, it only shows which movies are popular (a cursory glance through the top 50 showed almost all are from the last 2-3 decades & anything beyond that barely gets a fraction of the votes as the newer movies). It doesn't have a way of showing which directors are 'trending' or some such social media construct. Hence I consider what the film fests & art houses are showing. Yes, it is elitist, but on the other hand iMDB is probably the lowest common denominator. If there is somethng in between, perhaps a count of which directors' oeuvres are being discussed online (buzz factor), it would be the best, but I don't think that exists for movies.

    And about modern sensibilities I was obviously referring to P&P in the context of the time they were in.

    I guess I didn't explain my pov properly.

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  43. This is slightly off-topic.
    However I think this is an article that Colpeper as well as the Archers will whole-heartedly agree with.

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  44. Greatly enjoyed your ACT review. It seemed to baffle many English critics:-'would be propaganda piece...what Powell and Pressburger thought they were up to is hard to fathom'. (Halliwell's Film Guide).
    I can't recall whether it was Powell or Pressburger who said that you can't create magic in cinema but that you can build a nest and hope that it may make a home there?
    They built a nest alright.

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