The Canterbury Tales (1972) Full Movie Summary & Plot Explained

Set in medieval England, the film weaves together the daily lives of peasants, nobles, clergy, and even demons, while punctuating the narrative with brief glimpses into Geoffrey Chaucer’s world and the seeds of the Canterbury Tales. The frame is anchored by Chaucer, Pier Paolo Pasolini, as the storyteller who gathers travelers at the Tabard inn and, between interruptions and exchanges, opens his book to record a sequence of interlinked, stand-alone tales rather than a single mosaic of pilgrim-led stories.

The Prologue establishes the ensemble as the Gaudy Roadshow of the era—at the Tabard inn, the travelers chat, tease, and trade jokes as a ballad called Ould Piper fills the air. The heavy, tattooed man Daggers of the past looms as a visual contrast and foreshadowing, and the group’s dynamic sets the tone for the immediately following tales. The Prologue, framed by Chaucer’s presence, introduces the idea that the later episodes will be relayed and woven with a author’s eye, a meta-sense of storytelling that becomes the film’s throughline.

First Tale (The Merchant’s Tale)

Sir January, [Hugh Griffith], a weary and aging aristocrat, decides to wed May, a youthful woman who harbors real romantic interest in Damian. After their marriage, January suddenly becomes blind, and clings to May’s wrist for solace while she toys with her freedom and her forbidden love. May crafts a discreet path to her beloved in a private garden, aided by a key, and the two lovers improvise a plan to indulge themselves amid trees and flowering branches. The garden becomes a stage where a godlike Pluto [Giuseppe Arrigio] silently watches the lovers’ maneuverings, and where May’s scheming is tempered by the timely intervention of Persephone, who provides a calm rationalization for January’s wrath. Just as his sight returns, he briefly glimpses May and her lover in the act, but the goddess Persephone helps smooth things over with a few deft excuses, and the couple walks away reconciled, their marriage surviving the moment of crisis.

Second Tale (The Friar’s Tale)

A vendor witnesses a summons-related sting: a summoner and two men are caught in sodomy, and a bribe buys one escape while a second man meets a grimmer fate on a griddle. The vendor hawks his wares as the crowd watches, and afterward teams up with the summoner, revealing a shared appetite for profit. The old woman who is accused of wrongdoing tries to bargain her way out with bribes, but the summoner’s false charges meet their match when the old woman curses him to the Devil if he does not repent. The exchange tests the boundaries between crime, punishment, and the power of a single curse, while the Devil’s arrival underscores the moral economy of the tale.

Third Tale (The Cook’s Tale)

The travelers at the Tabard Inn fall quiet as Chaucer resumes recording stories, beginning with Perkin, a Pip-Pip-esque rogue who drags trouble behind him like a cloud. Perkin steals from passersby, causes chaos at a wedding, and finds himself pursued by the law, only to escape in a dramatic turn that leads back home to more scolding from family and the same old hunger. Perkin’s antics—from crashing weddings to pilfering coins and ending up in the stocks while singing a traditional tune—paint a portrait of a brisk, reckless street-smart street performer whose fate reflects the era’s rough edge.

Fourth Tale (The Miller’s Tale)

Nicholas, a clever young student, moves into the home of John, a stout carpenter, and quickly becomes entangled with John’s young wife, Alison. Alison quietly resents her husband and enjoys Nicholas’s attention, while Absolon and his friend Martin pursue Alison as well, staging a serenade that disturbs the household. Nicholas pretends to be in a holy trance to lure John away, proposing that they await a flood by suspending themselves in buckets from the ceiling. The couple’s ruse succeeds—at least temporarily—until the prank escalates: Alison flirts, Absolon comes back with a hot poker, and the mischief culminates in a double deception that leaves Nicholas urgently crying for water as John discovers the ruse and crashes to the floor, a comic catastrophe that echoes the Miller’s own worldly cunning.

Fifth Tale (The Wife of Bath’s Prologue)

In Bath, a middle-aged wife who has already married multiple times becomes enamored with a young student named Jenkin [Tom Baker]. During an improvised Obby Oss celebration, she arranges to meet him, and in a swift romance, she convinces him to marry her rather than his previous vows. The Wife of Bath’s vibrant personality shines in a scene where she reads aloud from a book condemning women’s evils, only to topple the book over and continue to court her new husband. Her fifth marriage accelerates as she escorts the celebration into another wing of the cathedral, and upon her wedding night she mocks conventional moral lecturing by biting her husband’s nose as a rebuke to those who would dictate her life. The episode is voiced through the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, which informs her later tale’s perspective on power, marriage, and female agency.

Sixth Tale (The Reeve’s Tale)

In Cambridge, a manciple falls ill, and two students—Alan and John—step in to run the mill’s duties. The Miller—Simkin the Miller—outsmarts them by releasing their horse and swapping their flour for bran, a scheme that tests both wit and appetite. The students stay the night, sharing a pallet with the Miller and his wife, and the nocturnal mischief unfolds as Alan admits to his affair with Molly, the Miller’s daughter, while John faces a similar temptation. When the Miller’s wife rises to relieve herself and stumbles, John seizes the moment to trick the Miller by moving the crib, causing the Miller to wake to a different romantic arrangement. The two scholars depart with their flour as Molly laments the deception, a scene that blends practical jokes with a cautionary note about trust and vulnerability.

Seventh Tale (The Pardoner’s Tale)

Chaucer’s frame returns with a quiet intensity as the Pardoner steers the narrative toward Death’s mischief in Flanders. Four young men carousing in a brothel encounter Death in various forms and decide to hunt him down. They meet an old man who directs them toward a nearby oak tree where they discover treasure instead of Death. Two youths remain by the tree while a third heads to town for wine, returning with three casks, two of which are poisoned. In a swift turn of greed, the trio betrays one another, and the survivors fall to the same fate they sought to punish, a fable about the corrosive power of avarice and betrayal.

Eighth Tale (The Summoner’s Tale)

In a final comic sting, a gluttonous friar attempts to wring donations from a bedridden parishioner, who offers a twist: he will share a treasured possession with all the friars if the friar distributes it fairly. The parishioner teases the friar with a riddle about a treasure that lies beneath him, and when the friar tests his will, the bedridden man delivers a crude fart that sets in motion a vision in which an angel guides the friar to an underworld where corrupt friars are expelled. This climactic sequence—part parody, part moral fable—draws on the Summoner’s prologue and folds the theme of hypocrisy into the final tale.

Epilogue (Chaucer’s Retraction)

The pilgrims arrive at Canterbury Cathedral as Chaucer, at home, writes in translation: “Here ends the Canterbury Tales, told only for the pleasure of telling them. Amen.” The film’s Epilogue diverges from the original text, presenting Pasolini’s Chaucer as unabashed about sexuality and ready to confess the tales’ ribaldry rather than urging restraint. The result is a closing mood that embraces the tales’ audacious spirit while leaving a personal mark on how the stories might be read as a whole.