THE CANTERBURY TALES (1972)

The second of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Trilogy of Life films is based on Chaucer's classic collection of stories told by a group of pilgrims heading from London to Canterbury Cathedral. Though one might assume them to be religious stories, they aren't, though they deal in issues of morality. Pasolini was probably attracted to them for their cruder, sexier elements as in the other trilogy films. The director himself plays the poet Chaucer who arrives among the pilgrims, singing and wrestling in muck, with one selling indulgences "piping hot from Rome," as they set out for Canterbury. It is suggested everyone take turns along the way at telling comic stories to pass the time (someone observes that "between and jest and a joke, many a truth can be told") and we see Chaucer dutifully writing the tales down, but unlike in Chaucer's work, we don't see or know who is telling the tales. The first has the elderly Sir January deciding to marry a young woman; he sees May's bare ass in the marketplace and picks her. He proclaims loudly that he's worried that the force of his lovemaking will injure her (while one of his servants rolls his eyes), but as soon as she's married, she starts flirting with Damian, a young man who spreads his legs apart for her gazing delight and later masturbates to thoughts of her. January is struck blind, leaving May free to hook up with Damian, except that her husband insists she hold his hand everywhere they go. Out for a walk in the garden, Damian is hidden in a tree and May, under the pretense of picking berries, climbs up on January's back to enjoy some canoodling with her young man. A playful god watching the scene gives the old man back his sight, but a playful goddess gives May the words to explain away what he's seen. The next story has a summoner catch two men engaged in sex with young male prostitutes; one man pays the summoner a large sum to be freed but the other cannot and so is burned to death in the churchyard. The Devil, who is selling food to the onlooking crowd, follows the summoner as he tries to extort tax money out of a poor old woman, but with the Devil's help, the woman gets the best of the summoner, who winds up in Hell.

The rest of the tales mostly involve sex or toilet humor or both. In one story, a man attracted to someone else's wife holds onto his obvious erection as he prays to "soften all this is rigid." In another, the wife of Bath, whose husband is dying, is attracted to a young student, gives him a casual handjob, then immediately after the husband's funeral trots to another part of the church to marry the student. The famous Pardoner’s Tale, which may have inspired the moral lesson of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, features bandits who plot against each other leading to no good end for any of them. Two stories involve farting as a major plot point, and the grotesque finale, inspired visually by Bosch, shows the devil shitting dead corrupt holy men out of his ass. None of the trilogy films rely on nuanced acting, with non-pro actors filling many roles, but Hugh Griffith (familiar from Ben-Hur, Tom Jones and Oliver!) is fine as Sir January. Prolific Italian actress Laura Betti is the Wife of Bath, and Pasolini regulars Ninetto Davoli and Franco Citti are also present. Davoli, who was Pasolini's companion for a time, is at the center of one of the best tales, the misadventures of a happy Chaplinesque doofus who leads a couple of policemen into a Keystone Kop situation (complete with some sped-up action). The photography and set design are splendid, with many shots having a gorgeous painterly look (see photo above) The raunchiest but also maybe the most accessible of the trilogy films. [Criterion Channel]