The film opens with medieval strollers on the Canterbury Road. In an audacious jump cut twenty years ahead of 2001, an eagle becomes a fighter plane.*
Then Sheila Sim, American Sgt John Sweet (his only film) and Dennis Price alight from a train in blacked out Chillingbourne, Kent, met by an even younger Charles Hawtrey than in Pimlico. P&P know how to use the blackout effectively, having done so in Contraband (1940), and so does the glue man, who promptly glues the girl's hair.
In the middle of the film, we get involved in an epic battle between two boys' armies. This is not a film like any other.
Wonderful sweet writing, particularly Powell's favourite scene by Pressburger in which the American and an Englishman (Edward Rigby) discover they have much in common over wood, and from where the phrase "You can't hurry an elm" came (and was oft-repeated between the pair at appropriate moments). Pressburger, an alien, was not allowed into Kent for the filming as it was too near the enemy, or something.
I particularly like the scene with Sim and Eric Portman in the long grass, and the final train journey into Canterbury, where Portman magically receives a halo, and the camera positions subtly change from a side angle to face on; blessings are received by all. The film says something about history and country like no other and is perhaps why it is so well-loved (enthusiasts hold an annual walking tour of the film's locations).
The trick shot where Sim almost faints may well have been appropriated by David Lean, who does something similar in Great Expectations.
Esmond Knight is the narrator, the man from Seven Sisters and the village idiot.
Beautifully shot by Erwin Hillier, who you can hear saying to Powell "Just five minutes more, Micky, there's some great clouds coming!" And the usual contributors: Alfred Junge (production design), Allan Gray (music) John Seabourne (editing).
* According to Erwin Hillier this was Pressburger's idea, quoted in "A Canterbury Tale" by Paul Tritton.
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