"A chap on his own gets a bit cracked sometimes": Michael Powell on Mr Colpeper

Michael Powell also had some interesting things to say about A Canterbury Tale in the 1981 interview I linked to in my post on Gone to Earth: 

I believe you once described A Canterbury Tale as a crusade against materialism?

One of the themes of the story was that. Emeric said, "Why don't we make a film about the sort of ideals we are fighting for?" Obviously, one of the most interesting characters in a discussion of that kind is the complete materialist played by Dennis Price.

At the climax he does get to play in Canterbury Cathedral.

Yes, but he's only one of the pilgrims. They all gt their desire. The girl finds her young man whom she thought was dead. John Sweet learns that his fiancée has gone to Australia with the WACs, Dennis Price plays the organ before going overseas and probably getting killed. All get their desire except Mr. Culpepper.

I find that the three pilgrims who get their desire are all learning. They have their traditions behind them, like Dennis Price who wants to play the organ properly. The American is interested in the English heritage. Eric Portman also reveres England but his other side is "The Glue Man", pouring glue on English girls to stop them fraternising with GI's.

The trouble with a man like that is that he's a loner. If he had a wife she'd have told him not to be so silly and taken his glue away from him. But he's a typical Englishman in that way. I tried to indicate that by the type of things he was interested in. You see in his room mountain climbing and walking scenes – things you do alone. So a chap on his own gets a bit cracked sometimes – monomaniac.

The film is set just before D-Day, which still lay the best part of a year away when it was being shot, and I have always feared the two sergeants did not survive it.

I would have liked to have heard Powell's account of the first of two scenes that run under the closing titles, as it points to a blessing for Colpeper too. Because of the time when the film was set and made, however, these scenes, where we see first soldiers and their girls flocking to one of Colpeper's lectures and then the boys playing football rather than war, can only indicate a possible future.