Pier Paolo Pasolini's rendition of Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Tales' can be seen as little more than a bawdy romp, in the best tradition. For those who enjoy Rabelaisian excess and low morals will enjoy this, although it has dated and the dubbing is atrocious - the film having been shot in a mixture of English and Italian. In fact the film's identity lies restlessly between the two countries, with the Italian Pasolini choosing not to adapt the quintessential English classic. It's a shame really that he didn't make more of an effort to address this cultural divide or even try to align the themes of the stories with contemporary relevance - but then that's just not the kind of film this is.
Featuring Pasolini regulars such as Ninetto Davoli and Franco Citti, the film (like its source material) follows several characters and narratives throughout the course of the film. In Chaucer's original, a group of pilgrims take turns to tell a story on their way to Canterbury, but here Pasolini casts himself as Chaucer and bypasses the pilgrims to become the sole author. Between scenes of him sitting in his study and smiling to himself we are treated to frequent nudity, heterosexual and homosexual sex, flatulence, public urination, fraticide, adultery and more.
Some stories are told in different styles, noticeably the segment featuring Davoli as a Chaplinesque tramp in a series of farcical scenes relying heavily on visual humour - although lacking the good-hearted moral nature of Chaplin's character. Others overlap, such as when we accompany Citti's voyeur, spying on secret acts of buggery, then watching the participants attempt to buy themselves out of trouble. Those who can't are burnt alive. Citti's character is then revealed as the Devil as he fiendishly tricks a young man into giving him possession of his soul. The juxtaposition of humour and seriousness only comes across occasionally, and Pasolini is probably the only director who would cut straight from homosexual anal sex to a procession of nuns. But the sublime excellence of this is lost in a film with many cheap gags.
The emphasis shifts from witty humour: Davoli queuing for food handouts with an outrageously large bowl, or a queue of men urinating against a building simultaneously tipping their hats to a passing woman with "the best pussy in the country"; to coarse behaviour: Robin Asquith (of the Confessions of A... soft-core series) urinating over various sinners in a whorehouse, a red hot poker inserted anally as retribution for a facial fart; to the utterly outrageous: Satan expelling friars from his anus in Hell.
As you can tell there's little seriousness to this film, which is occasionally a shame, as my personal favourite tale featuring three brothers seeking Death to mete out revenge, only to kill each other out of greed, is glossed over fairly quickly and is lost in the general humour of the overall film. Alternatively, despite the controversial content, almost all of these devilish characters are ultimately punished, and in some ironic way the film is both a celebration of, and condemnation of, greed, promiscuity and immorality. Ultimately however, as the final shot of the film tells us, these are stories told "simply for the fun of telling them."
Pasolini is undoubtedly a fascinating, talented and very controversial filmmaker and is certainly worth investigation but I wouldn't recommend 'The Canterbury Tales' as the starting point. Beginners would be much better off seeking out his excellent neo-realist debut, 'Accatone', or 'The Gospel According to St Matthew'.
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