More notes on 49th Parallel / A Canterbury Tale
I really liked this film, but there were some dumb things. For example, four times in this movie unarmed Canadian civilians challenged or disobeyed armed German soldiers, they got themselves killed in three of those four situations. If P&P and the British propaganda people thought that this was the way to win a war, there were sorely mistaken. The Germans were just as reckless and showed an incredible lack of discipline. At the trading post, an ordinary sailor, acting on his own killed two Canadians who could have been very useful to their escape. I’m also sure that German soldiers knew that if they killed unarmed civilians while trying to escape, they would not be sent to a POW camp, they would be hung. So In essence, what they were doing was an irrational suicide mission. Still, it was an entertaining movie. And we do get a pretty accurate view of how a dedicated Nazi thinks though, Portman’s Lt. Hirth. And the comical performances of Laurence Olivier and Ashley Wilkes, I mean Leslie Howard. The climax with Raymond Massey was well played, with a much gritter looking Eric Portman snapping to life as his escape nears. I usually root for the underdog, and it was easy to do in this film, especially when they give the villain all the best lines that flow so well. Like this in the boxcar -
“Yes, I’m a Nazi. (One of them off the U-boat) Quite right my friend. In two minutes I shall be across the border. Once there were six of us. Now I represent them all. We've beaten these dirty democracies, these weaklings. I tell you we've something inside us, something beyond the dim, muddied minds of you in the democracies. What do you know of the glorious, mystical ties of blood and race that unite me and every German Aryan? It’s not the Canadian people were against, its your filthy government, the whole democratic system.”
And this, when at the Hutterite farm Vogel expresses regret over all the killing they had done -
“You know, Vogel, I’m worried about you. You’re a good fellow, but you don’t discipline yourself. You give way to emotions. That’ll land you in trouble one of these days. Why don’t you take an example from Kranz, a fine, soldierly fellow. You could be just as good a Nazi as he is if you tried.”
A Canterbury Tale
This film was pure propaganda with no entertaining Nazis to redeem it, instead we get a rather annoying American soldier/bumpkin. The two themes here, English heritage and Anglo American relations just before D-day, were not convincingly explored in my opinion. The film did have some of P&P's usual quirky charm, and some nice vistas, but it just wasn't enough. No memorable dialog like 49th P. I didn't dislike it, but I really couldn't recommend it to anyone as entertainment, except to someone with very specialized interests. I just re-watched some of Patton the other night, now there’s an entertaining look at Anglo-American relations during the war. The British took some hard shots in that film, I don’t know whether they were justified or not. OK, that’s all for now. I look forward to learning from someone out there the things that I may have overlooked.
Cheers.
I must say that I like Canterbury in spite of its defects, especially for its relentless British whimsy and quirkiness - come on, a "Glue Man" avenger protecting the virtue of women in a town full of randy soldiers? And the bit about the farm being kept up by women, including the owner, a magnificent specimen of tough-minded can-do womanhood, who reminded me a little of the awe-inspiring Catriona Potts (Pamela Brown), mistress of the castle and master of hounds in "I Know Where I'm Going." With all these other flourishes to buoy me up, I can easily overlook the anemic plot and the poor quality of the acting by the American soldier. (By the way, did you notice the passing reference to marijuana in a scene with the two soldiers just before they go into the cathedral???)
ReplyDeleteLast week, I finally saw The Edge of the World (1937) which was Powell's first big movie (and a couple of years before he met Pressburger), a film nearly ethnographic in its focus on the community & landscape of a small Scottish island in the Shetland Islands (he was inspired by the story of the "evacuation" of the people of St. Kilda, who threw in the towel after most of the younger generation left for better jobs & lives on the mainland). Almost every scene makes use of the dramatic cliffs and fields and seascapes of the island – some of the vertiginous cliff drops similar to the sheer Himalayan drops in Black Narcissus (1947). Laurie also loved this movie – who wouldn't? It's a GREAT rich movie – but she was especially smitten because as a little girl (and just recently she reread it again) she loved a book with a similar setting, tiny little community on an Irish island, called Twenty Years A-Growing, by Maurice O'Sullivan. I just saw in Wikipedia that it was originally published in 1933 in both English and Irish (Gaelige). The book was fairly successful and is still in print today, with many critics (including EM Forster) giving enthusiastic reviews. The movie is not at all based on this book, but similarly documents a vanishing way of life in a ravishingly isolated island community. (They have to resort to attaching letters to little wooden blocks attached to sheep bladders & thrown into the sea, to be picked up by passing ships, to get a message to the mainland!) Powell's fidelity to his story, the use of non-actor locals throughout, the swooning love for the dramatic landscape, everything combines wonderfully to create a very moving portrait of the people of Foula. And with this first major project, Powell is already spreading the pixie dust around a little, his camera constantly capturing an atmosphere of magic and wonder, the everyday atmosphere for the islanders; you can almost see in their faces (of the locals acting in the movie) how much it has affected them to live their lives in such a rich and challenging place. One of my favorite set-pieces is when an elderly farmer has to rope-climb down a steep hillside to rescue a stranded sheep – very matter-of-fact how he risks his life to get this one animal back up to the hilltop, with the ocean heaving just below. If you haven't seen this, make sure you add it to your list – it's not an Archer's film, but it's a fantastic beginning to a fantastic life in film.
I really want to see The Spy in Black now, not a P/P Archer film but Pressburger did contribute some scriptwork, I think. It doesn't seem to be available except as a Region 2 DVD, so I can't play it on my DVD player. I shall have to scour the interwebs & see if anybody has posted it online. Amazon instant video does have Contraband available for viewing, so I think that's my next Powell movie (and the first real Pressburger/Powell movie).