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This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

This superb allegory by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger follows the pilgrimages of three disparate people during WW II as they make their way to Canterbury along the 600-year-old Pilgrims Path. Each is seeking a miracle or consolation from their journey.Alison (Sheila Sim) is a London shop girl who ventures to the English countryside to work on a farm as a "land girl" and to revisit the spot where she vacationed with her now dead soldier boyfriend. Bob (John Sweet) is a naive American GI who's girlfriend back in Oregon has stopped writing to him. He told his mother he'd visit Canterbury. Peter (Dennis Price) is a disillusioned organist whose career has been limited to playing in movie theaters and who is soon to ship out overseas.The three disembark a train together and venture toward the great cathedral city when Alison is attacked in the dark by a strange offender known locally as the "glue man." He's poured nasty glue all over her head. As the three find lodgings and talk to locals they learn that the glue man has struck many other times.Alison settles into her farm job while Bob discovers the countryside still (in 1944) very much tied to 19th-century ways. Peter tries to find out more about the glue man. They all meet a local eccentric (Eric Portman) who may be the glue man. He lectures locally on the rewards of country life and works as a magistrate in Canterbury. They all meet at the cathedral as they meet their fates.Absolutely gorgeous B&W photography lovingly displays the beautiful countryside with ample shots of wide sky and billowing fields, rustic farms and buildings, and always Canterbury in the background.The simple story lines are set against the complex allegory of a journey of discovery. Each of the pilgrims finds something in Canterbury, but what happens to them afterwards is left to our imagination. Both Alison and Bob find answers to their private sorrows, and Peter attains a cherished dream. All three are changed in deep and moving ways.John Sweet was an amateur actor stationed with the US Army in England when he was discovered for this role. His plainspoken American is both naive and deeply wise. His growing love of the countryside and the old ways is infectious. Sheila Sim plays a sturdy and practical girl who deals with her loss while loving her new life in the country. Dennis Price plays the most complicated character, since his loss is more a loss of ambition and opportunity than a loss of human love. His discovery at the cathedral is very moving. Portman is a lonely and aging man who may be attracted to Alison as a kindred spirit, but all paths do not lead to the same destination.Many notable actors in small parts include Edward Rigby, Charles Hawtrey, Hay Petrie, Freda Jackson, Esma Cannon, Graham Moffatt, Eliot Makeham, Esmond Knight, and Judith Furse.Powell and Pressburger scored a major success with this moving and seemingly simple story. But the characters will stay with you long after watching this glorious masterpiece.

Hardly anyone can miss the immensely strong sense of place in the film. Whether it was all shot there or not, the beauty of the unspoiled country outside Canterbury and the desolation of the bombed city around its towering cathedral must strike everybody. What some previous reviewers are less sure on is the equally strong sense of time.Most people pick up the almost mystical links with the Iron Age track, the Roman military road and the way of the medieval pilgrims. The two young people from London and the third from distant Oregon are clearly following an ancient trail towards revelation. What is equally important, to my mind, is an understanding of the exact period in which the story unrolls.The photography gives us endless clues of late summer in the south of England: cut corn in sheaves, hops being picked, long grass going dry on the downs, blackberries to eat. In fact, we are given precise dates: it is the end of August 1943. First meeting at the railway station on the night of Friday 27 August, the three young people join up there again on the morning of Monday 30 August to complete their pilgrimage.What was hanging over the protagonists at the time? On various fronts, the Germans and Japanese were being pushed back: the Russians were winning the huge tank battles around Kursk while the western Allies were victorious in the Solomon Islands and in Sicily. Both the young sergeants knew that they were likely to be fighting on the mainland of Europe soon.By the time the film was released in England, a year later in August 1944, the picture was very different: British and American troops were racing towards the Rhine, the Russians had broken into Germany and the Japanese were retreating in the East. Some of the huge tensions facing the people in the film were eased. As invasion was improbable and air raids unlikely, the Home Guard would soon be stood down and the blackout relaxed. The US soldiers had crossed to France, never to return. So the rich slice of rural and urban life caught in the film was already historical, but still worth treasuring as a lyrical evocation of a place and a time. Under the surface of its relatively simple story, deep currents run.

As a huge fan of The Archers, my favourite being 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943),' I must confess that 'A Canterbury Tale' is an odd little customer. Of course, it is exquisitely made, capturing with grace and delicacy the simple beauty of the British countryside, peaceful despite being scarred by the war raging nearby. Powell and Pressburger manage to replicate - in that subtle, indefinable manner unique to them - the feel of the highland breeze pressing gently against one's face, imbuing it with something otherwordly, almost magical. The film's prologue, set in the Middle-Ages, segues into the main story with the extraordinary match-cut of a hunting falcon with a WWII fighter-plane (predating the famous bone/satellite transition in '2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)'). But it took a long time for me to work out where the story was going.Much of the film concerns itself with a somewhat amiable mystery, as three visiting "pilgrims" – an American soldier (John Sweet), a farm girl (Sheila Sim), and a London man (Dennis Price) – attempt to identify the notorious "Glue Man", a peculiar local criminal who attacks women with glue. There is only ever one suspect, and their conclusion is never in doubt. So just where is the film going with this? It seems remarkably quaint that, as the world flounders in the midst of conflict, these three people should become so interested in catching such a small fish. It isn't until the final act that Powell and Pressburger reveal their true intentions, and the final few minutes are among the most hauntingly reverent I've ever seen, comparable to 'Andrei Rublev (1969)' in their religious fervour.

One of the great pleasures of Powell & Pressburger films (and there are many) is that they exist outside of genre categories and constraints. The fun of watching them is that they always trust the audience to find their own way through idiosyncratic material. On top of that you're always observing filmmakers working in a very open, artful idiom. Granted this movie is supremely light stuff, the rough equivalent of a Nancy Drew mystery, but so much of it is charming and the P & P approach is of very high quality.The 'plot' is inexplicably inept. It's about a loose criminal whose method, motive and moniker are beyond bizarre. But everything else more than makes up for it. Freed as it is from genre clichés, there's plenty of room for viewers and their readings; you detect, pursue and ponder what you like, and this movie does its best to stay out of your way. Watching earnest people for any length is pretty trying, but this is so striking it's hard to complain. It's shot so beautifully I'd watch it again just for the compositions. I feel about this movie as many do about Night of the Hunter, a similarly visual but thoroughly mediocre film.The only really bad aspect of the movie is the American GI; an overearnest pinhead, as dense as they come, played by a horrible, off-putting actor whose skills would be inadequate even for community theater. I was aware that this is an "American" as presented to British audiences, and likely about as realistic in intent as British characters in American films. But for god's sake, after 5 minutes with this irritating simpleton I'd be giving his coordinates to the Nazis. I'd cheer to see him strangled.The movie is MUCH too long, and pacing is out the window, but the location photography is stunning and there are a handful of memorable/funny sequences. This movie actually made me wish that Hitchcock had been less contrived and controlled in his presentation of England and Englanders.