Les Contes de Canterbury

Making a film about the Canterbuy Tales, one that lasts one to two hours, presents one with the decision of how to go about it.

The logical approach would be to tell of the pilgrimage itself, and then splice 2 or 3 tales at a time, probably beginning with the joke tales, like the miller's.

It would be doubtful that one could get all the stories in, and still have a pilgrimage tale.

Here, the pilgrimage is pretty much forgotten, just mentioned at the beginning.

The cuts between stories are sometimes straights cuts, and sometimes back to Chaucer writing the tale.

The bawdiness is kept, although it is done more Italian style than English. There is a mixture of the two cultures involved here.

The stories stay fairly true to form.

It would take a huge budget to include the squire's story, and indeed, the squire's story would take some interpretation to finish. Sadly, it is left out.

Which leaves the pardoner's story as the "thriller" story. I was very much hoping this story, a natural finale, would be the climax.

I wasn't disappointed. The pardoner's tale is the masterpiece in terms of action and adventure. It isn't exactly the very last tale, but close enough to serve as the climax, as there are two very brief joke tales that follow it.

Would I piece it together like this? Probably not. I think each person would direct this in a different way, with about a half dozen general methods.

However, I liked the way this film was done. It stayed very true to form, in my opinion. Most of the tales are "raunchy humor" tales, showing the mores of what one would expect to be puritan people, most of them professionals in religion. This was well done.

This is the second in Pasolini's series of setting classic bawdy tales to film… In this case, he selected eight of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, including the infamous miller's tale and the incident with the red hot poker kiss…

The tales revolve around a group of pilgrims who are journeying to the shrine of Saint Thomas a Becket of Canterbury… The trip is so boring that they begin telling each other stories that soon get obscene, gory and very sexy… Pasolini adds another motif to his visualization by placing Chaucer himself into the movie, periodically cutting to him writing at his desk...

Pasolini inserts pleasure and amusement at social customs, especially marriage… Some of the stories are funny, others are deadly serious… The scene where a young man is burned for making love to another of his own sex, for example, is chilling...

In fact, Pasolini's using non professional actors, is more in keeping with the tone of the original than the usual romanticized versions...

Continuing his 'Trilogy of Life' cycle exploring medieval literature, The Canterbury Tales by Pier Paolo Pasolini, delves into some of the tales weaved within Geoffrey Chaucer's famous stories. It explores the myriad sexual depravities and allusions with bawdy gusto, featuring almost every perversion known, from voyeurism, flagellation, homosexuality, to even the "love" of a watermelon. The disparate, prurient tales are interwoven with Pasolini plays Chaucer here at his writing desk, imaging his lasciviousness upon villagers. There is even a strange comic interlude paying homage to Charlie Chaplin, in the form of Pasolini regular, Ninetto Davoli.

Whilst the visual style is similar to The Decameron (1970 - Dante Feretti again is art director), the stories do not intertwine as well here, which could create some confusion in the viewer. With a largely British cast (including Tom Baker, Hugh Griffith, Jeeny Runacre, and even Robin Askwith), the film film sometimes feels like a slightly less repressed 1970's British sex comedy (Carry On Canterbury, if you like). With its delight in sexual promiscuity and perversion, it is certainly one of Pasolini's less than intellectual affairs, and even fails to humour. Unless of course your funny bone is easily pleased by fart jokes.

With a bizarre finale set in hell (its visual design clearly inspired by the painting of Hieronymus Bosch), we see an over-sized Satan shitting out some plebeian folks, to the obscene delight of those scattered round the pits. Whilst this incredibly short ending is disgustingly joyous, it fails to save a very scatological film, that vies more towards the crass than the enlightening.

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It is the second part of Pasolini's "trilogy of life" and IMHO,the weakest :part of the reason can be found in the fact that it's merely more of the same ;after" Il decameron' the sensation of surprise has disappeared.Bawdiness,bawdiness and bawdiness,and a good dose of scatology.Besides,the stories,adapted from Chaucer are less interesting than in "IL decameron" ;the only good really good segment,as far the script is concerned ,is the one with the students and the miller's family:the mistaken identities are hilarious.But what remains is never really exciting.The scene in which a gay is literally "fried " is downright disturbing,coming from a director like Pasolini;the sequence is treated seriously ,almost without humor-unless the donuts seller counts-.

No one can argue the splendor of the cinematography;most of the times,it looks like pictures at an exhibition:the moist misty landscapes -particularly in the students' sequence- sharply contrasts with the mediterranean overcome by the heat ones in "il decameron";and the score,which includes old English traditionals is first-rate too.Ninetto Davoli,Pasolini's favorite actor,does his usual (almost silent) stint,in the grand tradition of Charlie Chaplin,which almost seems supernatural in this context;One should add that Josephine Chaplin is also part of the cast:some kind of double tribute.

The script is the Achille's heel of the movie."Il fiore della mille e una notte" will set the record straight and redeem Pasolini,for it's without a doubt the peak of the trilogy of life,with its numerous stories " à tiroirs".

If you watched this movie in order to get a crib of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, you'd be out of luck, and missing the point. Chaucer's underlying anti-clerical and pro-love-and-life philosophy may be there, but the substance is very different. Pasolini's 14th century England lives and dresses more like 16th Century Italy.

The Miller's Tale is much grimmer when brought to the screen than Chaucer would have intended. "And Nicholas is branded on the bum, And God bring all of us to Kingdom Come" in Coghill's cheerful popular translation, becomes something more like the execution of Edward II. Not just on, but in. And the execution of a sodomite too poor to bribe his way off the griddle seems drawn out just to make a bad joke about the seller of "griddle cakes" (frittelli) plying his trade in the crowd.

He is one of the more than fair share of handsome young men in the film, and there's more than a fair share of closeups of their middle regions, front and back, in tight-fitting breeches (not that I'm complaining).

One feature that is almost entirely absent is any sense of pilgrimage. The storytellers appear only at the beginning and end of the tale. Instead we cut back to Chaucer himself (Pasolini himself, and very handsome he is too), writing the tales at a snail's pace. There are also long (by 2006 standards) tracking shots over indifferent scenery. Yet other scenes jump disconcertingly, the start of one tale used to mark the end of the previous one.