Impressed by his work on "The Silver Fleet" (1943) for their Archers Film Productions, Powell & Pressburger ('The Archers') hired Hillier as cinematographer on "A Canterbury Tale" (1944), a film about which Powell later said Hillier "did a marvelous job". Despite Powell's recent work with the three-strip Technicolour film process, war shortages meant a return to the black-and-white stock that Hillier was familiar. The film is a mixture of British realism and the German expressionist use of extreme light and shade which Hillier has been trained in, and is remembered for its depiction of the English landscape. In his autobiography, Powell recalled his obsession with clouds; he often begged for filming to be delayed until a cloud had appeared to break up a clear sky.