#633: PASOLINI, Pier Paolo: The Canterbury Tales (1972)

TRILOGY OF LIFE {Spine #631}

PASOLINI, Pier Paolo (Italy)

The Canterbury Tales [1972]

Spine #633
Blu-ray

Eight of Geoffrey Chaucer's lusty tales come to life on-screen in Pier Paolo Pasolini's gutsy and delirious The Canterbury Tales, which was shot in England and offers a remarkably earthy re-creation of the medieval era. From the story of a nobleman struck blind after marrying a much younger and promiscuous bride to a climactic trip to a hell populated by friars and demons (surely one of the most outrageously conceived and realized sequences ever committed to film), this is an endlessly imaginative work of merry blasphemy, framed by Pasolini's portrayal of Chaucer himself.

111 minutes
Color

Monaural

in Italian

1:85:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2012

Director/Writers

Based on the stories of Geoffrey Chaucer.

Pier Paolo Pasolini was 50 when he directed The Canterbury Tales.

Other Pasolini films in the Collection:

#0000F1: Accattone (1961)
#0000F2/#236: Mamma Roma (1962)
#0000F3: Love Meetings (1964)
#0000F4: The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964)
#0000F5: The Hawks and the Sparrows (1966)
#0000F6: Oedipus Rex (1967)
#0000F7/#1013: Teorema (1968)
#0000F8: Porcile (1969)
#0000F9: Medea (1969)
#632: The Decameron (1971)
#634: Arabian Nights (1974)
#17: Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1976)

The Film

Chaucer with side-by-side translations to modern English.

Chaucer’s retraction:

“I beseech you meekly, for the mercy of God, that you pray for me that Christ have mercy on me and forgive me my sins; and namely of my translations and compositions of worldly vanities, which I revoke …”

**

In the middle film of his “Trilogy of Life,” Pasolini goes to England to bring the dust of Chaucer back to life. Of the original 24 tales, Pasolini uses eight. If the original was not saucy enough, Pier Paolo wasn’t shy about making it as racy and erotic as possible. Women’s breasts and pubic hair are abundant, but penises make even more appearances. Scatalogical humor (farting, urinating, defecating) is ever present.

As the credits roll, we hear the traditional ballad Ould Piper, about a piper who dies and is sent to Hell where he annoys the Devil with his terrible singing.

The characters appear in brief segments at the Tabard Inn as they prepare for their pilgrimage.

1850

Chaucer (Pasolini) enters the inn and bumps into a heavy man with woad tattoos, injuring his nose. The Wife of Bath (Laura Betti) brags about her weaving skills and sexual prowess. The Pardoner (Derek Deadman) tries to sell fake relics. As we meet the travelers, Chaucer opens his book and begins to write down their stories.

1. First Tale (The Merchant’s Tale): Old Sir January (Hugh Griffith) decides to marry May (Josephine Chaplin). January goes blind, but May manages to have a dalliance with Damian (Oscar Fochetti), just as January’s sight returns — restored by Pluto (Giuseppe Arrigio). He is furious, but Persephone (Elisabetta Genovese) one ups her husband, Pluto, and makes January forget what he saw.

2. Second Tale (The Friar’s Tale): Two different men (vendor/summoner) spy on a homosexual encounter, and turn the offenders over to the authorities. While one is able to bribe his way out of punishment, the other is burned on a griddle (while the vendor sells griddle cakes). Later the vendor and summoner set out to blackmail an old woman, but manage to take away only a gold pitcher. They both ride off to hell.

3. Third Tale (The Cook’s Tale): All the travelers but Chaucer have fallen asleep. He begins to jot down this latest adventure. Perkin (Ninetto Davoli [Davoli was 15 {1963} when he began an affair with Pasolini; during this production, he married a woman and Pasolini was furious] — a Chaplin-esque fool who carries a cane and wears a bowler hat. Pasolini evens rips off a famous scene from The Circus.

The best scene has him “polishing” eggs. His cane knocks over a basket of eggs, and they all remain intact. The boss is awestruck, and tries it himself — making a messy omelet on the ground. Pure Chaplin. Perkin eventually finds himself in the stocks, where he drunkenly sings The Ould Piper.

4. Fourth Tale (The Miller’s Tale): Nicholas (Dan Thomas) lives next door to an obese, elderly carpenter, John (Michael Balfour). Nicholas and Absolon (Peter Cain) seduce John’s wife, Alison (Jenny Runacre). Nicholas convinces John that a massive flood is about to occur, and they all wait in buckets tied to the rafters to escape drowning. Silliness ensues (fart jokes) and a hot poker in the place where the sun don’t shine has Nicholas crying out for water. John believes the flood has arrived.

5. Fifth Tale (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue): The wife (Betti) is seeking a fifth husband — Jenkin (Tom Baker). She bites his nose.

6. Sixth Tale (The Reeve’s Tale): Alan (Patrick Duffett) and John (Eamann Howell) take a sack of grain to be milled to Simkin the Miller (Tiziano Longo). Slapstick ensues and it is only to be guessed who will fool whom …

7. Seventh Tale (The Pardoner’s Tale): Three youths set out to avenge their friend, Rufus (Robin Askwith)’s death. They end up beneath an oak tree, where they find a treasure. Greed will determine the outcome — one of the best parts of the film.

8. Eighth Tale (The Summoner’s Tale): We find ourselves in Hell, where Satan expels hundreds of corrupt friars from his rectum. Well done, PPP …

The Extras

Film Rating (0-60):

54

The Booklet

Sixty-eight page booklet featuring an essay by Colin MacCabe and Pasolini Answers Questions.

MacCabe:

“A striking addition to Chaucer’s text comes toward the beginning of the film, when a man is burned to death for the sin of sodomy. This sequence has no parallel in the source material; it’s of Pasolini’s making, and all the darker for its relation to his own homosexuality. The grisly, realistic scene, which looks forward to the horrors of Salò (1975), creates a much blacker tone than is to be found in The Decameron. Indeed, its horror is accentuated by the fact that we know that the sin for which the screaming man is being burned is not the sin of sodomy but of poverty — unlike his fellow sinner, he does not have enough money to buy off the power of the church.”

Pasolini:

”I told these tales for the joy of telling them. The joy of storytelling implies a playfulness around telling the story. And this playfulness in telling a tale implies a certain freedom with regards to the material. This freedom in relation to the material demands that all Chaucerian reconstruction be visionary and never a pretense for rebuilding the world historically. History in this film is pure vision. So I had to forget Chaucer to make this film a visionary game, my personal game as an auteur … my personal psychological attitude toward the characters and the facts of the film, in that case, is a mixture of irony and pity. Irony corrects pity, and pity corrects irony. And thus the finale: the irony of hell, with the devils, and then the final ‘amen,’ which corrects the ironic violence of hell.”

Commentary

None.

Interview

With film scholar Sam Rohdie.

“[Pasolini’s films] are obsessed with time — the present and the past — and the way in which the present is criticized and looked at from the point of view of the past; and the way in which the past becomes a kind of criticism of the present …”

Pasolini and the Secret Humiliation of Chaucer (2006)

A 47-minute doc.

Pasolini had originally intended to imitate Chaucer’s introductory mini-chapters where the character whose story would follow is described. Before the Berlin jury saw the film, he cut all that out — in addition to scenes which showed the pilgrims’s caravan and their introductions to their stories.

Lots of photos of the unused script pages.

Interviews

With art director Dante Ferretti and composer Ennio Morricone.

Ferretti discusses all the art influences: Dürer, Bosch, Uccello; Pasolini — who gave him his start — was his mentore (mentor), while Fellini was his mentiore (liar)!

Morricone is little more than an arranger for this film. He would normally have refused the commission, but Pasolini showed such respect for him. A big important word in Italy.

English-language inserts

The insert cards with the pidgen English.

Trailers

Two separate trailers in the English dub. Tales of Tails … and a five-minute Italian.

Extras Rating (0-40):

35

54 + 35 =

89

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