A Canterbury Tale

Powell and Pressburger’s glorious wartime idyll follows an unlikely trio of the heartbroken—an American GI, a British soldier, and a determined young “land girl”—as they almost accidentally retrace the ancient pilgrim’s route to Canterbury Cathedral, meeting locals the war left behind and solving a strange glue-related crime along the way. Shot amidst the recently blitzed, still threatened ruins of Canterbury and the timelessly green Kent countryside (Powell’s birthplace), A Canterbury Tale documents the physical and emotional scars of war, yet points towards transcendence through embracing the eternal, whether in history, nature, or art (even cinema). Forget Why We Fight; this is why we live.