The Canterbury Tales [I Racconti di Canterbury] **** (1972, Ninetto Davoli, Franco Citti, Laura Betti, Hugh Griffith, Tom Baker, Jenny Runacre, Michael Balfour) – Classic Movie Review 3200)

For his 1972 third Trilogy of Life movie, The Canterbury Tales [I Racconti di Canterbury], Italian writer-director Pier Paolo Pasolini freely tackles the literary masterpiece of Geoffrey Chaucer and makes the revered English material his own. With its exteriors filmed on location in the UK and its interiors in the studio in Rome, it managed to be a popular and critical success and was the winner of the Golden Bear at Berlin in 1972.

Pasolini gleefully and successfully mixes his own Italian stars (Ninetto Davoli as Perkin, Franco Citti as The Devil, Laura Betti as The Wife of Bath) with Britain’s character actors (Hugh Griffith as Sir January, Tom Baker as Jenkin, Jenny Runacre as Alison, Vernon Dobtcheff as The Franklin, Alan Webb as the Old Man, Derek Deadman as The Pardoner, Nicholas Smith as the Friar, Robin Askwith (billed as Robin Asquith) as Rufus, Patrick Newell as the Prior and Michael Balfour as John the carpenter). Karl Howman and Philip Davis play gay lovers.

Chaucer’s jovial bawdiness becomes an erotic 1970s-style explicit, hellish Dante-style, Bosch-like cesspit, but the humour, sexuality and visual splendour are in full bloom. [Indeed, the angel’s line in the last segment ‘Vuolsi così colà dove si puote ciò che si vuole e più non dimandare’ (‘It’s will’d, where will and power are one. Ask thou no more’), is a quotation from Dante’s Inferno.] The Italian team comes out best, particularly devilish Citti blackmailing sex criminals in The Friar’s Tale.

Pasolini includes adaptions of eight stories: 1. The Merchant’s Tale, 2. A new tale: A professional blackmailer, who has just turned a man over to the authorities for a same-sex relationship, meets the devil, 3. The Cook’s Tale, 4.The Miller’s Tale, 5. A new tale, based on the Wife of Bath, 6. The Reeve’s Tale, 7. The Pardoner’s Tale, 8. The Summoner’s Tale: A greedy friar goes to hell.

Alberto Grimaldi’s production is beautifully shot by cinematographer Tonino Delli Colli, with lovely production designs by Dante Ferretti and another notable score by Ennio Morricone.

Pasolini appears as Chaucer, in the second of his three literary sex romps based on bawdy classics, following The Decameron in 1971 and preceding The Arabian Nights in 1974. He followed that in 1975 with the first film in his Trilogy of Death series, Salò, but was murdered before it was released.

Also in the cast are Oscar Fochetti and Dan Thomas.

The Canterbury Tales [I Racconti di Canterbury] originally ran 140 minutes but is horribly dubbed in the cut to 109 minutes English-language version.

Robin Askwith recalled: ‘To urinate over the unsuspecting villagers of Saffron Walden is on no syllabus at any drama school. I loved Pier Paulo…. everyday was an adventure…!’