The Canterbury Tales (1972)
"I racconti di Canterbury" (original title)

Director:

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Writers:

Pier Paolo Pasolini (screenplay), Geoffrey Chaucer (book)

Stars:

Hugh Griffith, Laura Betti, Ninetto Davoli

1 win.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Hugh Griffith	...	Sir January
Laura Betti	...	The Wife from Bath
Ninetto Davoli	...	Perkin
Franco Citti	...	The Devil
Josephine Chaplin	...	May
Alan Webb	...	Old Man
Pier Paolo Pasolini	...	Geoffrey Chaucer
J.P. Van Dyne	...	The Cook
Vernon Dobtcheff	...	The Franklin
Adrian Street	...	Fighter
O.T.	...	Chief Witch-Hunter (as OT)
Derek Deadman	...	The Pardoner (as Derek Deadmin)
Nicholas Smith	...	Friar
George Bethell Datch	...	Host of the Tabard (as George B. Datch)
Dan Thomas	...	Nicholas

Storyline

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Plot Keywords:

middle ages | stabbed to death | priest having sex with a woman | market | written and directed by cast member | 

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Genres:

Comedy | Drama

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Certificate:

X

Details

Country:

Italy France

Language:

Italian English

Release Date:

30 May 1980 (USA)

Also Known As:

The Canterbury Tales

Filming Locations:

Bath, Somerset, England, UK

Company Credits

Production Co:

Les Productions Artistes Associés, Produzioni Europee Associati (PEA)

Technical Specs

Runtime:

140 min 109 min (cut) 140 min (premiere)

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.75 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The line spoken by the angel in the last segment, "Vuolsi così colà dove si puote ciò che si vuole e più non dimandare" ("'It's will'd, where will and power are one. Ask thou no more"), is a quotation from Dante Alighieri's Inferno.

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Quotes

The Cook: Between a jest and a joke, many a truth can be told.

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Connections

Follows The Decameron (1971)

User Reviews

Interesting but not Chaucer

If you watched this movie in order to get a crib of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, you'd be out of luck, and missing the point. Chaucer's underlying anti-clerical and pro-love-and-life philosophy may be there, but the substance is very different. Pasolini's 14th century England lives and dresses more like 16th Century Italy.

The Miller's Tale is much grimmer when brought to the screen than Chaucer would have intended. "And Nicholas is branded on the bum, And God bring all of us to Kingdom Come" in Coghill's cheerful popular translation, becomes something more like the execution of Edward II. Not just on, but in. And the execution of a sodomite too poor to bribe his way off the griddle seems drawn out just to make a bad joke about the seller of "griddle cakes" (frittelli) plying his trade in the crowd.

He is one of the more than fair share of handsome young men in the film, and there's more than a fair share of closeups of their middle regions, front and back, in tight-fitting breeches (not that I'm complaining).

One feature that is almost entirely absent is any sense of pilgrimage. The storytellers appear only at the beginning and end of the tale. Instead we cut back to Chaucer himself (Pasolini himself, and very handsome he is too), writing the tales at a snail's pace. There are also long (by 2006 standards) tracking shots over indifferent scenery. Yet other scenes jump disconcertingly, the start of one tale used to mark the end of the previous one.