The Glue Man, three young people and a fascinating insight into the Britain of 1943

Now the thing about old films is that long after their contemporary appeal has faded they become a piece of history.

It starts with the the clothes, the cars and the buildings and moves on to the assumptions, prejudices and attitudes of the people portrayed along with its period comment on the events of the time.

So it is with A Canterbury Tale, made in 1944 by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger.

The film is loosely based around the Canterbury Tales and involves three very different people all with their own unique and powerful stories who come together in a Kent village just outside Canterbury in the summer of 1943.

The three consist of a British sergeant an America sergeant and a Land Girl who are thrown together by the mystery of the Glue Man.

The events last only a few days but in the course of those three days we get to see how these young people from different places and different walks of life work together to solve the mystery and come to a closer understanding what they have in common.

Now given that the film was made in 1944 it is pretty easy to see the motivation that drives the plot and that of course is part of its value today.

The threat of a common enemy in the form of the Glue Man unites the three and along the way we get to know more about their own lives which have been put on hold by the war.

And as the plot unfolds the film offers some wonderful scenes of Kent over 70 years ago, from the bombed out houses on streets in Canterbury to rural scenes in the fictitious village of Chillingbourne.

These are themselves a priceless record of a past which no longer exists.  The hay waggon loaded high with a land girl sitting on top, the old men outside the pub and the carpenter talking about when to lay down timber for the future are scenes of a rural way of life which seem timeless but has pretty much vanished..

And of course that is one of the messages of the film that here is a way of life unchanged for centuries which is at the very heart of what we were fighting for.

Added to which it provided an opportunity to show just what we had in common with the United States as the that young American talks to a carpenter and finds out that he lays down timber for the future in exactly the same way as in America.

And as you would expect of a film with an eye to its propaganda value, all three receive good news.

The Land Girl discovers her boyfriend who was shot down has survived and that his father no longer opposes them getting married, our American gets news that his girlfriend is serving with the Women’s Army Corps in Australia and the British sergeant gets to play the organ in Canterbury Cathedral.

All of which in itself echoes those themes of the People’s War which pitched people out of their ordinary lives and threw them new challenges and in the process showed how the country was united in its determination to win.

And that is all I want to say, if you want more the film is available and as well as being a good tale is real history lesson.

Of course there are a shed load of equally interesting films from the period which no doubt I will return to.

Pictures; cover from A Canterbury Tale, and Canterbury in 2009 from the collection of Andrew Simpson