User:Neddyseagoon/sandbox/Canterbury Tale plot

I'm leaving this as a master copy - if you'ld like to edit it, use this one.

The first shot (under the credits) is of the bells of Canterbury, and out towards the west end from the Bell Harry Tower. The following sequence involves a voiceover of the Nevill Coghill translation of Chaucer's General Prologue, as the camera pans down the original Middle English text and then to an 'olde worlde'-style map of medieval England and its pilrimage routes, converging on Canterbury. The voiceover then stops, and is followed by a sequence of Chaucerian pilgrims in the Kent countryside in the style of a nineteenth century style painting of the scene, in which the Knight, Squire, Yeoman, Prioress, Monk, Wife of Bath, Miller and Reeve are all identifiable. This then cuts to a separate sequence, in which the Squire releases a falcon, watches it fly into the sky, then a shot of the falcon, then a shot of a descending Spitfire, then of the same actor as the Squire in a WWII army uniform. The voiceover returns, giving the prologue a modern continuation, describing how east Kent's landscape has changed since Chaucer's time, particularly in wartime (eg the Enclosures, troop carriers along the Pilgrim's Way, and trains along the railway line in the valley below).

The main story then begins. A train is pulling out of a station at night, and the station signs are not lit up, due to blackout. An American soldier, Sergeant Bob Johnson (played by real-life G.I. Sergeant John Sweet), mistakes the stationmaster's calling "Canterbury next stop" as the train leaves for "Canterbury this stop", and gets out of the moving train. He bumps into and argues with the stationmaster, until a British soldier, Sergeant Peter Gibbs (Dennis Price), comes over and explains. Johnson is told that he is now stuck in Chillingbourne (for this is where he has got out) until the next train at 8.57 the following morning.

The stationmaster notices Johnson's stripes of rank, asks what rank he is and, when he replies that he is a Sergeant, comments that the stripes are the wrong way up, compared to Gibbs'. Johnson protests at there being no more trains, but the stationmaster retorts that this is the kind of place where people sleep at night and asks Gibbs for his ticket. Gibbs tells him that he is going to Chillingbourne camp, and so calls over a 'Land Girl', Miss Alison Smith (Sheila Sim). He sends Gibbs and Johnson with her, according to the orders of Mr Colpeper (a local magistrate) who has ordered that no women should be out alone in the town after dark.

Johnson asks if there is a hotel here and, when the stationmaster tells him to ask at the town hall, expresses suprise that such a small place is a town. The stationmaster replies that Chillingbourne was constituted a municipal borough in 1085, 407 years before Columbus discovered America. They all laugh, with Johnson saying that he did not mean to hurt the stationmaster's civic pride, and introduce themselves.

All visitors must report at the town hall, and Gibbs needs to catch his bus up to the Camp from there, so they escort Smith. The girl is nevertheless attacked by a mysterious assailant who pours glue into her hair, before escaping. The three hear him escaping and Gibbs tells Johnson to turn on his torch (which the stationmaster had criticised as far too bright for the blackout) in an attempt to catch him. They pursue, splitting up, and work out that he must have run into the town hall. Gibbs catches the bus, leaving Johnson with Smith. They enter the town hall and we see Johnson and Smith in full light for the first time. On telling them what has happened, the police inside comment that the "glue man" is out again. The police go about looking for him, commenting that though they are far slower than the police in London or America, they know their duty. Johnson is left with Smith while the police search the building for the "glue man" and when he protests that he should come with them, since the glue man might be dangerous, and asks if the police have a gun. They retort that this is Chillingbourne, not Chicago, though Johnson mutters that that is unfair since he comes not from Chicago but Oregon.

The police find a light on in the courtroom, but it is only Mr Colpeper (Eric Portman). They tell him about the visitors and they tell them to continue searching the building. Alison is helped to wash the glue from her hair. Johnson goes to see Colpeper and, as they start talking, someone shouts up that Colpeper has not pulled his blackout curtain down sufficiently. Colpeper, quizzing Johnson, finds that he has been to Salisbury and has seen some good movies there but missed the historic value of the place. He asks if Johnson wants to see another movie in Canterbury. Colpeper gives him a chit for a free stay at the hotel, as the town's guest (he is the first US soldier they have seen). Colpeper muses that when asked what back home what he has seen in England Johnson will only be able to say he has seen some movies. Johnson remarks that Colpeper has misjudged him, and that he knows that in Canterbury he has to look out for a cathedral. Colpeper replies ironically that he cannot miss it as it is just behind the movie theatre, and the two part good-humouredly. Alone, Colpeper goes to the window and ticks himself off for his mistake with the blackout.

When Smith goes up to meet Colpeper, she tells him that she has been sent by War Agricultural Committee to work on his farm. He tries to dissuade her from staying, not as she first thinks because she is a girl and cannot do the work, but due to the proximity of a camp full of soldiers. Smith hears something moving in the cupboard in the room and thinks it is the "glue man". Colpeper comments that the glue man cannot have got through as Colpeper has been there all the time. He opens it, but they only find a Home Guard uniform.

Smith talks to the hotelier at the hotel about Colpeper and about the Pilgrim's Bend on the Pilgrim's Way outside the town. She tells him that she stayed there in a caravan with her geologist fiancee before the war, while the local town council were refusing to excavate it. Since they, it has been excavated, not because the council have changed their minds, but because Chillingbourne changed its magistrate for the more archaeologically-minded Mr Colpeper.

Smith goes up to her room, washes her hair again and goes to meet Johnson, who is also staying there. It having transpired that the glue attacks have happened 10 times before, Smith asks Johnson to stay for the day and help her find the culprit. Alison is suspicious of Colpeper, but Johnson is less so since Colpeper has got him such a nice room, with a four poster bed. He is also reluctant to stay since he has a friend coming down from London to meet him at Canterbury and he wants to get to see the cathedral first as he has promised his mother he will do so. Smith convinces him in the end, though Johnson remarks that she is so confident that she needs "about as much help as a Flying Fortress".

The following morning the giggly chambermaid wakes up to open the curtains, bring in an urn of hot water and give him his morning tea. He asks why he cannot have coffee, and she tells him about the overhang of the room that makes the gap across the street so narrow that 2 six foot men could shake hands across it. He pours the water, washes, gets dressed and, sticking his head out of the window to say good morning to those in the street, gets no response. He then battles against a recalcitrant swing-mirror which will not stay still in order to tie his necktie and chats to Leslie, a boy on top of a tall hay bale on a cart that has drawn up outside. Leslie repeats the joke about the stripes being the wrong way up, and Johnson gives him a shilling.

Colpeper finds out from the hotel staff that Smith has been kept on by one of them (Mrs Foster), and sent to the local wheelwright to get a wheel mended. We cut to Mr Horton the blacksmith's, where he elaborately mocks Smith in front of his friends for only having experience of Northumberland sheep farming and not 'proper [ie Kentish] farming', and for having no knowledge of how to mend the wheel herself. She however has her revenge by asking what he was doing before the war. When he answers indignantly that he has been a blacksmith all his life, she replies that she was a shop-girl and that (just as she does not know all about farming) he would look odd behind a counter at. Horton and his friends all laugh, and this breaks the ice. Johnson arrives and says that he wants a talk with Colpeper, exagerating his interest in the pilgrim's road. They talk with Horton and his staff about the flue man as they put the wheel on, Smith rejoins the horse to the cart on her own to show her, and Horton talks to Johnson, finding that they have a lot in common in their woodworking, lumber and wood seasoning methods.

Horton invites Johnson to dinner that night, and then he leaves with Smith on the cart. They pass a house, which Smith remarks that she would give anything to live in a place like that. On seeing Colpeper in the garden (it is his house), they pull off and comment that he looks right and cannot have been the "glue man". Johnson tells her he is definitely getting the train to Canterbury later that day, after he has told her what Horton knows. He does not know what to do in the afternoon and, when Smith comments that he should write some postcards, he replies that he wants to do this from Canterbury instead. They get to talking about why he does not write to his girlfriend any more, because she has apparently not written. Smith says that the letters may have been lost to enemy action, but Johnson thinks they cannot, since he is the only one not to have been receiving letters and it cannot be just the part of the mailship with his letters on which is lost. Musing on how his girlfriend liked woodcraft as much as he did and on how much they loved each other, he and Smith part company so he can walk back to lunch. She tells him that he hopes the road will go over the Pilgrim's Bend, telling him about her holiday there with her fiancee. Johnson asks whether he writes to her, and on being told that he doesn't, quips that the letters must have been lost to enemy action. She replies sadly that not the letters but the fiancee himself, a pilot, was lost to enemy action. Johnson apologises and they part silently. As she is nearly out of earshot, Smith shouts back that she hopes he will have better luck with his girl, and Johnson waves.

Miss Pru Honeywood meets Smith at the farm and describes her duties. Honeywood's sister Susanna has been another victim of the "glue man". They discuss Smith's work, and Smith states that she prefers the countryside and work to her life and work in London. Honeywood knows London, as the only man who ever asked to marry her wanted her to live in similarly depressing urban surroundings. Later Smith picnics with another farmworker and "glue man" victim, Fee Baker, who comments that she likes dancing but would not go to a dance with soldiers from the camp because everyone knows the "glue man" is a soldier (since the attacks only started when the camp opened). Smith describes her theory that the "glue man" is a civilian trying to discourage local girls from being unfaithful to their boyfriends(such as Baker's boyfriend Ernie, who is with the Eighth Army), away on active service. Smith takes a list of the victims, to investigate her theory, but Baker states that if Smith's theory is right, many people could wish to discourage them thus and could potentially be the perpetrator.

Smith, out driving the cart along the Pilgrim's Way, is surrounded by troop carriers led by Gibbs. Gibbs questions her and gets one of his men to tell of his relationship with a local girl Gladwys, cut short by a "glue-man" attack. They arrange to meet with Johnson at a lecture on local history by Colpeper at the Colpeper Institute, as advertised at the camp.

Johnson, arriving at the lecture, reads the inscription over the door, a quote from John Dryden:
 * Not heaven itself upon the past has power
 * But what has been, has been, and I have had my hour.

He enters and sits at the front with an English sergeant who has a brother called Isaac Wells in Butt City, Montana. Asked if he knows him, Johnson humours him saying he can't place him and on finding that their homes' names are similar (Johnson's is Three Sisters Falls, Oregon, and the sergeant's is Seven Sisters Road, London), he shakes his hands and makes the sergeant laugh by saying he has far more sisters than him. Colpeper walks past Gibbs, waiting in the entrance for Smith, on his way to the lecture hall.

As Colpeper introduces his lecture, Johnson and the sergeant go to join Smith and Gibbs as they enter. Colpeper engages in raucous banter with his audience, remarking that he has a much better turnout than for the last lecture and trying to convince them to come back to Kent when they are not there enforcedly there. Referring to Chaucer's pilgrims, he comments that there are cooks, clerks, doctors, lawyers, and merchants both among the soldiers and among the pilgrims. He encourages an emotional way of getting close to the past, seeing the same things they saw, and being almost able to hear them on the road behind one, which Smith sympathises with as she looks at him in the shadow of the slide projector's light. Having seen the glue-man in similarly dark conditions, she trys to work out if he is the "glue-man". Colpeper completes his speech and tries to show some slides of excavations, but the slide projector breaks. As it is mended, Gibbs argues with him over the lecture, Johnson makes peace, and Smith talks engagedly with Colpeper about the road. He say that some Belgic coins were found on the bend by a geologist (ie Smith's fiancee), and Smith says that they were left to her by their discoverer and that she would like to give them to Colpeper and his museum. Applause breaks out, but it is for the mended slide projector not for her kind offer.

As they walk back to the bus-stop, Johnson tells Smith and Gibbs that Colpeper must be the "glue-man" since, when they pursued the "glue-man", there was no light in his office, but there was when Johnson went in. Colpeper must have got in, turned the light on in a hurry and not pulled up the blackout sufficiently Smith agrees, but cannot believe he is, as he has not motive. Gibbs catches the bus, and Smith and Johnson again discuss his getting no letters from his girl, thinking that (akin to the Chillingbourne girls with their absent boyfriends) she must have left him while he is away risking his life in foreign wars. He remarks that mum always said blondes like her girlfriend were no good, but then jokingly finds that Smith's hair is blonde too. He takes her back to the hotel.

In the morning Johnson joins a mock battle on the river and at a local mill, between local children. He discusses lease-lend and American isolationism with them, before asking them to help find out about local drug stores or, as the boys know them, grocers, where the "glue-man" must be buying his glue. He then goes to a Sunday morning church service. Meanwhile Smith interviews all her fellow "glue-man" victims. When she, Gibbs and Johnson collate the information, they find that attacks were always between 11.30pm and midnight, but otherwise they make no progress and Gibbs decides he will do better to go and meet Colpeper (as he had asked those at the lecture to do so if they were "really interested"). The village boys arrive with the grocer's account book and, though they can find no sticky stuff in it, Gibbs works out that Colpeper and bigger figures in the town buy in things from Canterbury and Johnson that they can sift through Colpeper's rubbish to check for sticky stuff by getting it as war salvage.

Gibbs goes to Colpeper's house and is shown into his office by Colpeper's mother. He searches it for clues before Colpeper arrives. He arrives and they argue over Colpeper's wishing to better others and (literally and metaphorically) climb mountains, though they get onto Gibbs's failure to become a church organist, with Colpeper commenting that there are two kinds of men - those who wish to play Bach and end up playing at a cinema, and the man who learns to walk step by step until he can climb Everest. They get on to the "glue man" attack, with Gibbs stating that the attacker was about Colpeper's height and Colpeper again gives his alibi that he was firewatching and on home guard duty. Gibbs notices his rota for these duties and whilst the boys sent by Johnson to get salvage from Colpeper distract Colpeper, Gibbs removes it. When Colpeper returns, Gibbs tries to leave but Colpeper suggests they continue talking.

We cut to Johnson attempting to master a British "press button A, press button B" phone, with Gibbs advising. He presses the wrong button and all the change comes pouring back. As he reinserts it, he lists under his breath all the things in England different to the USA - telephones, mirrors, tea drinking, left hand driving, upside-down stripes. He finally gets through to the hotel his friend is staying at in London and leaves a message that he cannot get to London and so his friend should meet him at Canterbury Cathedral, and puts the phone down. Gibbs then demonstrates from the rota that he can predict when the attacks took place without reference to their list, and so that they all occurred on the days Colpeper was firewatching (every 8th day). They always occurred before midnight, and a light was never seen in Colpeper's room until after midnight on the days in question.

Gibbs and Johnson go to see the salvage the boys have collected from Colpeper and find a Rymans receipt in it, showing he has purchased glue in town. Johnson then gives the boys money to buy a new football as a reward.

Smith meanwhile climbs the Pilgrim's Bend, looks down on the cathedral and, in her imagination, hears the pilgrim's behind hear as Colpeper had referred to in her lecture. Colpeper rises from where he had been lying in the long grass looking at the sky, and they discuss what she heard and how they were both mistaken about each other. She tells him again of her 13 day holiday on the bend with her fiancee (mentioning his name, Geoffrey, for the first time), and that this is why she was so desperate not to be sent away from Chillingbourne. She muses that if there is such a thing as a soul, he must be with them, and that they had been engaged 3 years due to obstruction from his father, who was of good family and thought that his son could marry better than a shopgirl. Colpeper muses that "shop girl" and "good family" are dillapidated phrases for wartime, and that the earthquake she thinks it will need to shift them is happening because of the war. She comments that it has come too late for her, now Geoffrey is dead, and that it is unfair that people like her who love the country should be forced to live in big towns like London. Colpeper remarks that miracles do still happen and that, unlike when he was Smith's age, he does now believe in them, even for shop girls, and perhaps even for shop girls more than millionaires (though he quips that he has never been either a shop girl or a millionaire). They finally move on to her going into Canterbury the next day to see the caravan in which she holidayed and the War Agricultural Committee. Colpeper muses that these may be the instruments of a pilgrim's blessing.

The pair hide themselves back in the long grass when they hear Gibbs and Johnson climbing the hill, debating English tea-drinking. Gibbs states in its favour that Germany and Japan have beaten everyone but the tea drinkers (ie China, Russia, England), though Johnson states that it does seem to have left Gibbs unhealthy (he is out of breath on coming up the hill). Gibbs agrees that he is unhealthy and when Johnson states that he thought organists were good climbers (eg of church towers) Gibbs states that (as a cinema organist) he always used a lift. They compare the view, the river they are looking down on (the Stour) and the size of English blackberries, with those in Johnson's home. Gibbs states the view was nearly worth the climb and admits though Stour is no Missisipi, and Johnson admits that he hasn't seen the Missisipi, and adds that something has been wrong with him ever since they sailed from America, due to the Army occupying the body not the mind and to homesickness. They contrast their leisure that day with Gibbs's usual indolent leisure on a peacetime Sunday afternoon in London, and with his lack of appreciation of the countryside. They move on to the "glue man", and reveal (without knowing he is listening) that they know it was Colpeper and that Alison did too, despite her sympathetic chat with him, but that strangely they all still like him anyway. The two then race each other down the hill, as Smith and Colpeper get up to leave, her worried that he now knows and he reacting to the news.

We cut to the three getting on the train to Canterbury the next morning (ie Monday). They discuss how Colpeper now knows, but then accidentally find themselves in the same compartment as him. They confront him with their suspicions, and he states that he knew the local police would catch him sooner or later but that what he did was not a crime but merely forcing the soldiers to go to his lectures. He had been trying to win others to his appreciation of knowledge of England and its beauty before the war, to no avail, but the war brought the audiences to him rather than vice versa. However, the soldiers would not come to his lectures due to dates with local girls. The two men state that this is only natural, soldiers feeling lonely away from home, but Colpeper cuts Johnson close to the knuckle by asking if he would like his girl doing the same while he was away. Many felt that this should be stopped, but no other villager wanted to take action or to stop the soldiers having a good time, so Colpeper did. Johnson compares the situation to the American tale of "Old Dad Butler who killed the fly on his baby's head with a sledgehammer", as an overreaction, and they all laugh, then Smith states that it is a pity Colpeper didn't ask the local girls to come to the lectures too. Johnson and Smith are ready to forgive Colpeper, seeing he meant well, but Gibbs continues to interrogate him, asking how he, as a magistrate, would judge the "glue man" in court. Colpeper states that he would be lenient if it turned out, in analogy to a burglar, that this was the "glue man"'s first offence and that he broke into the house to save Old Dad Butler's baby from burning to death. Looking out on the cathedral, he muses that if harm has been done he will have to pay, though perhaps from a higher court than the local bench of magistrates rather than being denounced by Gibbs.

Arriving at Canterbury West railway station, Colpeper states that pilgrimage can also be done (eg in his case) for penance rather than a blessing. Gibbs states that he needs neither, Colpeper says that Gibbs may be an instrument of one, and Gibbs retorts that he will believe that when he gets a halo round his head, as a halo-like shape of sunlight forms round his head in the train window behind him. Colpeper says his goodbyes to them at the city's Westgate, Gibbs reveals that his unit is leaving that day for active service, and they part. Gibbs looks for the police superintendent at the police station next to the gate, but is told to look for him at the cathedral. Then, to soaring music, we see Gibbs arrive at the Cathedral exterior (with boarded up windows) and to "Hear my prayer, O Lord" by Henry Purcell enters into the cathedral interior at the south transept.

In his lecture, in his previous chat with Smith and in justifying his actions on the train, Colpeper stated that Chaucer's pilgrams travelled to Canterbury either to seek a blessing or to do penance. All three young people receive blessings. The first is Gibbs who asks the organist if he has seen the superintendent and then, as the organist goes up to the organ loft, picks up a sheet of music the organist has dropped. Following him to return it, he gets to play the music of J.S. Bach on the large cathedral organ.

Sergeant Johnson arrives in the cathedral through the same door as Gibbs is playing. He ascends into the quire and comments in wonder that his father built the first church in Johnson County, and that that was a good job too. Meanwhile Miss Smith gets lost in the bomb-devestated city (she last saw in 1940, before the bombing, but eventually finds her way to see the caravan in which she holidayed near Canterbury with her fiancé, which is in storage in the city. The tyres have been removed for war scrap, it has not been dusted since the Baedeker Blitz, and the interior is also dusty and moth-eaten.  Smith cries silently at the memories the caravan brings back, and Colpeper arrives to express his sympathies, but then the garage owner also arrives, with news that Smith's fiance's father came down from Otford 2 weeks ago, and has waited for her.  Smith thinks that he wants to take the caravan from her, and protests that she won't let him take it as Geoffrey said it should be hers, but instead it has been because he has news that Geoffrey is not missing believed killed as she and he thought but has been rescued and is alive in Gibraltar. She half-faints with relief at the news, as the camera pans to the cathedral, then joyously flings open the caravan windows to get the moths out, but when she does so Colpeper has suddenly vanished.

Gibbs's battalion, about to be posted abroad, parades through the the West Gate. Meanwhile Johnson's comrade (who has spent his leave in London), whilst filming the Christ Church Gate sees Johnson running through it towards him. They go to a cafe next door. In a fast tone of voice, the comrade tells him about the nightlife he has missed in London but Johnson does not mind missing it. He tells the comrade what he has learnt about the pilgrim's road, and the blessings, but states that it does not work now. The comrade agrees, but then stops himself and gives Johnson a bundle of letters which arrived the day he left. They were mailed in Sydney, Australia, since she has joined the Women's Army Corps without his knowing.

Johnson and his comrade watch from the cafe as Gibbs's battalion parades into the Cathedral Close through the Christ Church Gate, and finally into the cathedral itself for a service. As the organ plays we cut to a crowd in the transept, including Smith and Geoffrey's father, and then pan to Gibbs on the organ. Having gained his redemption, Gibbs decides not to report Mr Colpeper, even when the constable arrives. Smith and Geoffrey's father share a silent reconciliation and file into the cathedral nave to attend the service for the battalion, with Colpeper looking on enigmatically. Johnson pats his pocket with the letters in and goes to join them The service then begins, with Gibbs playing the hymns on the organ. As the opening verse of "Onward Christian Soldiers" is sung and played, the camera pans to the crowded nave, and then to shadowy figures on the steps up from the transept to the aisle, who appear to be medieval pilgrims or the men from the garage, and this final shot cuts to the same shot as the first in the film (a shot of the bells in the central cathedral tower, looking out on the west end), then a shot of the cathedral from a great distance.