Romantic Landscapes: Visual Imagery in Three Films of Powell and Pressburger

Abstract

Towards the end of the film, A Canterbury Tale (1944), the central female character, Alison, undergoes an extraordinary spiritual experience whilst walking through the landscape. She gazes at the distant towers of Canterbury Cathedral and hears choral singing, followed by the sounds of Chaucer’s figures chattering as they follow the pilgrims’ way. These aural imaginings are accompanied by sumptuous visual images of the surrounding Kentish countryside as Alison stares in wonderment and awe. Up to this point, a number of characters in the film, including Alison, have been engaged in solving a mystery. At the beginning of the film she experienced a mysterious attack resulting in glue being poured over her hair. The unlikely narrative revolves around the detective work of an American sergeant, a British army officer and Alison, a land army girl. The local squire, Thomas Colpeper JP, is found to be responsible and the three set about proving his guilt. However, on the cinema screen, the convoluted plot is dominated by intensely visual landscape images. It is the richness of these images in A Canterbury Tale, and those in I Know Where I’m Going! (1945), and Gone to Earth (1950), which invite a new way of examining the films of Powell and Pressburger. A Canterbury Tale is one of many films made by The Archers, a production company formed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. Their films experienced a revival of interest from the 1970s onwards and have generated much debate and discussion in recent years. Many film scholars have singled out Powell and Pressburger as distinct from their contemporaries, producing films which bore little resemblance to contemporary film-making practices.1 Admittedly, their films often have a strange and convoluted narrative. However, I shall argue that