Les Contes de Canterbury

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...

When I was going to see "Canterbury Tales", I knew Pasolini was infamous director who made crazy films, that weren't for everyone's taste.When I saw it. It was one of those movie experiences that change the way you see films. It's not that I loved this film, I don't see how I can use word "love" here. It's just that from the beginning to the end I couldn't believe my eyes. Sequence after sequence, the movie became one of the most original films I ever seen in my life. Wife having sex standing on her husband's shoulders, woman farting in the face of the young boy who loves her, drunken man, p***ing on dining people, giant ass, that defecates with demons, it's shocking, yes, but it's not the point. The point is,we believe every single thing we see on the screen. Of course, it's because Pasolini uses natural lightning, unprofessional actors, and partly because when there is fucking on the screen, it's not simulation, it's real f**king (what other film can be classified as "porn", and also have Oscar-winning costume designer in its credits?). But it's not the reason. I always admired Pasolini, because he was one of those people, who make others respect them, who have remained hip even twenty years after they are dead. And being this incredibly fascinating person, he could put part of the magic that made him the person he was into his movies.

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.

This, even though it lacks a bit the wit and spirit of IL DECAMERON, which was funnier, it still manages to satisfy as you reach the end. Pasolini's perverted humor as well as some of his usual actors are here. There's full nudity, both male and female. Maybe here the erotic element is more intense so its less humorous, I am not sure. I suppose it will satisfy those who like Pasolini's humour like, say, IL DECAMERON.

The copy I saw had awful dubbing - Italian language- maybe it's bad sychronisation, or something else...

As far as I am concerned it is worth it alone for this special, absurd, perverted, surrealistic last scene, taking place in hell. It rulez! Some others scenes are awesome too! And of course there'e Pasolini evident dislike of church/religious dogmas.

If you're not easily offended and like old films, specially European ones, give it a try, IL DECAMERON as well.

As far as where this one sits on the film map, it's somewhere between Belle de Jour and Tinto Brass's Caligula.

The most important credit Pasolini's setting of the Canterbury Tales deserves is for its dismissal of the usual on-screen morality. Such candor seems essential to the nature of such a narrative (being much more appreciated than the stifled decadence of Keir Dullea's Marquis de Sade or the early Warhol/Morrissey efforts). This is most effective because the film also depicts the baseness and depravity of the late Middle Ages. Everyone's fornicating or trying to fornicate everyone else, with lots of potty humor thrown in just to make sure that it wouldn't be taken too seriously as a foray into art-house pretensions.

On all other counts, it's overblown and a bit sluggish, with an especially disappointing outcome au montage son. And non-professional actors are much less effective in adding a dimension of realism than they are in inducing a sense of self-mockery. The imagery is shamelessly ribald although not extreme, and the storyline is far from seamless. Far from Pasolini's best, although perhaps a good preparation for the far more intense Salo.