This 35mm screening of one of the most extraordinary films ever made in Britain is part of the 'Girls Like Us' season at BFI Southbank. You can find the full details of the season here. This film is also being shown on May 13th. Details here.
Critic and novelist Xan Brooks has written a beautiful piece on Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's film for the Guardian which you can read here.
Chicago Reader review:
Very nearly plotless, this 1944 film by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger represents one of the few times the narrative cinema has approached the lyrical ideal. Crossing wartime Britain, a group of travelers—including an American GI, a young woman from London, and an English officer—linger in a small farming village, ostensibly to solve a peculiar mystery (someone is putting glue in the local girls' hair), but really because of the spell (quite literal, in P and P's mystical vision) cast upon them by the countryside. Over the hill lies Canterbury Cathedral, and as parallels begin to emerge with Chaucer's pilgrims, the characters find themselves being drawn to it, for a soft-pedaled climax that represents the fulfillment of their individual quests. Strange and wonderful.
Dave Kehr
Here (and above) ... an extract ... and all you could wish for from a film.
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