The Canterbury Tales (1972)
Country: IT/FR
Technical: col 109m
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Cast: Hugh Griffith, Laura Betti, Tom Baker, Franco Citti
Synopsis:
Geoffrey Chaucer composes his masterpiece of pilgrims' stories in between being scolded by his wife.
Review:
Hardly the poet as hero (another would have had him scribbling them down on the journey to Canterbury itself), and this is a very eclectic selection, omitting the more heroic and allegorical stories and concentrating on the cautionary tale or the practical joke. The unremitting vulgarity of the piece (farting, priapic humour) amounts to a travesty of Chaucer's intent, and reveals far more about Pasolini's attitudes towards depicting heterosexual behaviour: perfunctory bouts of comic book coitus, never reaching orgasm and brutal even by the standards of the Middle Ages.
Country: IT/FR
Technical: col 109m
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Cast: Hugh Griffith, Laura Betti, Tom Baker, Franco Citti
Synopsis:
Geoffrey Chaucer composes his masterpiece of pilgrims' stories in between being scolded by his wife.
Review:
Hardly the poet as hero (another would have had him scribbling them down on the journey to Canterbury itself), and this is a very eclectic selection, omitting the more heroic and allegorical stories and concentrating on the cautionary tale or the practical joke. The unremitting vulgarity of the piece (farting, priapic humour) amounts to a travesty of Chaucer's intent, and reveals far more about Pasolini's attitudes towards depicting heterosexual behaviour: perfunctory bouts of comic book coitus, never reaching orgasm and brutal even by the standards of the Middle Ages.
Country: IT/FR
Technical: col 109m
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Cast: Hugh Griffith, Laura Betti, Tom Baker, Franco Citti
Synopsis:
Geoffrey Chaucer composes his masterpiece of pilgrims' stories in between being scolded by his wife.
Review:
Hardly the poet as hero (another would have had him scribbling them down on the journey to Canterbury itself), and this is a very eclectic selection, omitting the more heroic and allegorical stories and concentrating on the cautionary tale or the practical joke. The unremitting vulgarity of the piece (farting, priapic humour) amounts to a travesty of Chaucer's intent, and reveals far more about Pasolini's attitudes towards depicting heterosexual behaviour: perfunctory bouts of comic book coitus, never reaching orgasm and brutal even by the standards of the Middle Ages.