(1944, b/w) On the road to Canterbury there are blessings and penances bestowed upon pilgrims. Through a sentimental adaptation from Geoffrey Chaucer's 14th-century poem The Canterbury Tales (though without the opening, quoting from "The Prologue," one might not be aware of any association) directors/writers/producers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger created an overly nostalgic pastoral cinema (childlike in its innocence and simplicity during war), set in Kent, England, in August 1943, where two soldiers and a young woman meet on the train to Canterbury but get off at Chillingbourne.

The American sergeant, Bob Johnson (Sgt John Sweet), on furlough from his unit (among those arriving to prepare for D-Day the following June) has mistakenly got off the rails too soon. British Sgt Peter Gibbs (Dennis Price) is reporting for duty at the military training camp outside Chillingbourne. Before midnight they accompany Alison Smith (Sheila Sim), a London shopgirl answering a request for employment as a farmer laborer, into town where she becomes the eleventh incident of the Glue Man's prank of coating a woman's hair with glue.

The village squire, Thomas Colpeper (Eric Portman), who is both local magistrate and justice of the peace, though he requested a person for hire, refuses to employ Miss Smith because as a single female, he says, she's in jeopardy with soldiers nearby. Taking a suspicious dislike to Mr Colpeper, Alison finds work on Mrs Foster's farm; she and Bob (mildly irked with tea times, people commenting on his upside-down stripes, and driving on the left side of the road) begin an investigation into the identity of the Glue Man.

After listening to Bob's tale of woe about not receiving any letters from his girl back in Three Sisters Falls, Oregon, for seven weeks, Alison tells of her fiancé's having been a pilot "lost by enemy action."

Reunited with Peter, in civilian life a cinema organist from London with an ambition to play a big church organ, at Mr Colpeper's lecture about Kent and the Pilgrim Road, the threesome pursue in earnest detective work on the village mystery, recruiting the "generals" of two children's armies in their campaign. Interviewing other female victims, Alison develops a theory that the Glue Man may be trying to scare local girls away from seeing soldiers. (The supposed threat to a young woman's virtue by lustful men in uniform remains nothing more than a bogeyman in this idyllic story.)

With the mystery solved, all three taking the train to Canterbury are joined in their coach compartment by Mr Colpeper, who regards himself as a missionary in his believing in miracles. Their discussion with the magistrate, on his way to sit on the bench in Canterbury, concerns the question as to whether crimes if performed with the best of intentions might be excused from punishment. Alison, who has become fond of Thomas, experiences an epiphany: "You have to dig to find out about people as well as roads."

In Canterbury we're shown the magnificent cathedral still intact with its spires, vaults, and grand organ, surrounded by foundations of buildings destroyed during the blitz, a miracle in itself along with three other extraordinary events.

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