Making a film about the Canterbuy Tales, one that lasts one to two hours, presents one with the decision of how to go about it.
The logical approach would be to tell of the pilgrimage itself, and then splice 2 or 3 tales at a time, probably beginning with the joke tales, like the miller's.
It would be doubtful that one could get all the stories in, and still have a pilgrimage tale.
Here, the pilgrimage is pretty much forgotten, just mentioned at the beginning.
The cuts between stories are sometimes straights cuts, and sometimes back to Chaucer writing the tale.
The bawdiness is kept, although it is done more Italian style than English. There is a mixture of the two cultures involved here.
The stories stay fairly true to form.
It would take a huge budget to include the squire's story, and indeed, the squire's story would take some interpretation to finish. Sadly, it is left out.
Which leaves the pardoner's story as the "thriller" story. I was very much hoping this story, a natural finale, would be the climax.
I wasn't disappointed. The pardoner's tale is the masterpiece in terms of action and adventure. It isn't exactly the very last tale, but close enough to serve as the climax, as there are two very brief joke tales that follow it.
Would I piece it together like this? Probably not. I think each person would direct this in a different way, with about a half dozen general methods.
However, I liked the way this film was done. It stayed very true to form, in my opinion. Most of the tales are "raunchy humor" tales, showing the mores of what one would expect to be puritan people, most of them professionals in religion. This was well done.
The logical approach would be to tell of the pilgrimage itself, and then splice 2 or 3 tales at a time, probably beginning with the joke tales, like the miller's.
It would be doubtful that one could get all the stories in, and still have a pilgrimage tale.
Here, the pilgrimage is pretty much forgotten, just mentioned at the beginning.
The cuts between stories are sometimes straights cuts, and sometimes back to Chaucer writing the tale.
The bawdiness is kept, although it is done more Italian style than English. There is a mixture of the two cultures involved here.
The stories stay fairly true to form.
It would take a huge budget to include the squire's story, and indeed, the squire's story would take some interpretation to finish. Sadly, it is left out.
Which leaves the pardoner's story as the "thriller" story. I was very much hoping this story, a natural finale, would be the climax.
I wasn't disappointed. The pardoner's tale is the masterpiece in terms of action and adventure. It isn't exactly the very last tale, but close enough to serve as the climax, as there are two very brief joke tales that follow it.
Would I piece it together like this? Probably not. I think each person would direct this in a different way, with about a half dozen general methods.
However, I liked the way this film was done. It stayed very true to form, in my opinion. Most of the tales are "raunchy humor" tales, showing the mores of what one would expect to be puritan people, most of them professionals in religion. This was well done.