GurlyIamBeach Instant Favorite.

Arianna Moses Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

Cassandra Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

philosopherjack The last scene of Pasolini's wondrous Canterbury Tales emphasizes the narrative as an end in itself - "here end the Canterbury tales, told only for the pleasure of telling them" - and this reflects the film's sense of joyous tumble, one narrative often almost subliminally moving into another. But there's also something relentless about it, a feeling of people lacking in any real agency over themselves, as puppets of their own desires, as tools of those whose desires are stronger than their own, of the corrupt authorities, of the angels and devils which the film occasionally depicts as walking among the living. There's carnal overdrive and naturalistic nudity galore, and of course the film carries an erotic charge, but one that leads time and again to humiliation, misery, betrayal, pain, or death, and ultimately even beyond that, to one of the most tangible visions of hell ever put on film. The film is a triumph not so much of casting in the usual sense, but of human placement - an astonishing canvas of flesh and faces, suggesting people torn directly from the Medieval earth (the matchless English-language soundtrack, if you choose that option, adds considerably to this sense, when not evoking Monty Python, not that I'm saying that's a bad thing); and whether or not the various settings are historically accurate, they likewise feel discovered rather than created. At the same time, there's no doubt we're watching a work of extreme stylization, and not just in the episode that happily channels Charlie Chaplin; characters generally seem to be addressing the camera, or the void beyond it, more than each other. Which leads back to the movie's sense of desperation, that few of its possessed characters expects more from their compulsive screwing than the most fleeting of releases. The classification of the film as part of a "trilogy of life" seems, to say the least, ironic.

framptonhollis "The Canterbury Tales" by Geoffrey Chaucer may be among the most respected and famous works of classic literature, but anybody whose read it knows that it is a masterpiece of bawdy and dirty medieval comedy. The great filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini adapts this literary classic successfully, by showcasing its most funny and erotic elements, creating an entertaining and wild ride!Some of the segments in this film are certainly better than others (my favorites are "The Merchant's Tale", "The Cook's Tale", and "The Summoner's Tale"), and the final segment is easily the highlight. Seriously, the climax of this film is easily the funniest, strangest, and craziest depiction of Hell you'll ever see!

Shuggy If you watched this movie in order to get a crib of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, you'd be out of luck, and missing the point. Chaucer's underlying anti-clerical and pro-love-and-life philosophy may be there, but the substance is very different. Pasolini's 14th century England lives and dresses more like 16th Century Italy.The Miller's Tale is much grimmer when brought to the screen than Chaucer would have intended. "And Nicholas is branded on the bum, And God bring all of us to Kingdom Come" in Coghill's cheerful popular translation, becomes something more like the execution of Edward II. Not just on, but in. And the execution of a sodomite too poor to bribe his way off the griddle seems drawn out just to make a bad joke about the seller of "griddle cakes" (frittelli) plying his trade in the crowd.He is one of the more than fair share of handsome young men in the film, and there's more than a fair share of closeups of their middle regions, front and back, in tight-fitting breeches (not that I'm complaining).One feature that is almost entirely absent is any sense of pilgrimage. The storytellers appear only at the beginning and end of the tale. Instead we cut back to Chaucer himself (Pasolini himself, and very handsome he is too), writing the tales at a snail's pace. There are also long (by 2006 standards) tracking shots over indifferent scenery. Yet other scenes jump disconcertingly, the start of one tale used to mark the end of the previous one.

Eryn MacDonald I wasted my money on the DVD version of this film, I sure don't recommend this film to anyone unless they find demeaning, ridiculing and perverting women in film very stimulating! ( I don't just mean the women in the film, all women in general) I found this film very sexist like most films of the early 1970's. The only great part of the film, unfortunately was the scene with the gay man being executed and the two young Scottish men murdering one another! How very disturbing! As for the rest of the film, I did not find it one bit humorous, and the sex scenes were terrible! It is no wonder Pasolini was murdered after making the film and (with all due respect) was also gay. Please don't waste your money on this film, it is bad enough to be airing on television!