Dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini
I watched The Canterbury Tales on the same day that I watched The Decameron, which I really enjoyed, and by comparison this was a bit disappointing. Both the Canterbury Tales and the Decameron I think occupy a similar spot in their respective country’s literary history, and indeed share a similar format, with people in differing occupations tell tales. And logically Pasolini works in a similar way here as in The Decameron (which he had made a year earlier), letting each story just pick up when the previous one ends. But something seems lost in the pacing, and in the end it seemed some tales came across better than others. Perhaps as an Italian, Pasolini was more familiar with Boccaccio than Chaucer? The framing device here is Chaucer sitting around his desk, looking busy, which seemed quite weak. Chaucer is played, of course, by Pasolini, and I suppose I prefer the gung-ho painter of The Decameron to non-participant of The Canterbury Tales. And the bad dubbing of the Italian actors detracted further from the enjoyment of the film.
Still, the source material is good stuff, so the film remains entertaining. Most of the major tales get a look in:
Wife of Bath’s Prologue (eh… the lusty Wife is always entertaining, of course, but this could’ve been funnier. And Tom Baker makes for an awful Jenkins - wasn’t he supposed to be some sort of stunning stud? Try saying that quickly five times! Or maybe I just can’t get the idea of Dr Who as Jenkins out of my head!)
Merchant’s (boo, but I dislike the tale anyway; I wonder why I keep thinking this is the Knight’s Tale - that’s another one I dislike, incidentally)
Reeve’s (ha!)
Miller’s (ha!)
Cook’s (eh… the physical comedy was funny I suppose - was that a Chaplin homage?)
Friar’s (eh…)
Summoner’s (eh… I wished Pasolini had somehow dramatised the whole dividing-the-fart debate that the Lord and his squire suggest)
Pardoner’s (eh…)
There’s a lot of the bawdiness and sex from the original Tales, but I didn’t feel that the dramatisation enhanced any of the texts, unlike in The Decameron - no insightful changes to the original texts. Oh, and the back-and-forth of the travellers telling tales that undermined each other’s professions is lost in this version (the Summoner vs Friar thing I only find funny when they are sniping at each other’s occupation, the stories are quite ordinary). I do love the idea that they built a set just for the scene of Satan farting out friars. Whenever Pasolini showed romping in the open fields (the Wife of Bath and Jenkins, the Cambridge students from the Summoner’s Tale, the fields of Hell) the film seemed to have more life… Randomly, I thought the geese that were frequently shown wandering around were really cute… This review has the completely opposite reaction to the Decameron and the Canterbury Tales - it thinks the Canterbury Tales is more judgemental and overt about hypocrisy, and it thinks the Canterbury Tales is funnier. I think it’s wrong, of course.