ZAMEK Culture Centre

The second part of the Trilogy takes place in medieval England, drawn from Geoffrey Chaucer’s collection of stories. Eight tales, written before our eyes by the author played by Pasolini, portray the erotic misadventures and superstitions of the islanders with brevity and bawdy humour.  Amongst other characters we encounter an old man who is oblivious to his wife’s infidelity, victims of homosexual blackmail and a sexually deprived widow. Pasolini skilfully blends burlesque, scatological humour, apocalyptic vision and comedy of errors with a reflection on a world standing on the brink of modernity. The Canterbury Tales was filmed at more than 20 sites across the United Kingdom, and on Mount Etna. Inspirations drawn from Chaplin’s slapstick and Paolo Uccello’s and Albrecht Dürer’s paintings constitute a witty dialogue with Chaucer, in which age-old customs reveal strikingly contemporary paradoxes. The film was awarded the Golden Bear at the 1972 Berlinale. [Sebastian Smoliński]

The Canterbury Tales, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1972, 111'

Language: Italian with Polish and English subtitles