84 Charing Cross Road (1987)

Thanks for the memories!

Crappy film

Very interesting film. Was caught on the premise when seeing the trailer but unsure as to what the outcome would be for the showing. As it turns out, it was a very good film.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

84 Charing Cross Rd. is my idea of a fine movie and one that seems totally British. Ironically, as a fan of British movies, I was surprised to learn that this movie was produced by New Yorker Mel Brooks, a departure from his usual slapstick comedies. He also produced The Elephant Man and his wife Anne Bancroft appeared in both, as did Anthony Hopkins. The film is based on a book by Helene Hanff, one of the two main characters. This story took place during a the period from 1949 to the end of the nineteen sixties. The plot neatly shifts from New York to London as the two leading characters exchange letters as part of their antiquarian book transactions. Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins are excellent in the roles that bring together Helene Hanff and Frank Doel over their shared love of books. We hear voiceovers from both as each character reads their own letters. This is a touch that fits in beautifully with the movie. Frank is very businesslike in his role as the bookstore manager. The feeling of elation or disappointment are palpable as Bancroft opens the packages she receives from her London bookseller. Bancroft is an animated script writer whose love of literature is well matched with Anthony Hopkins' own vast knowledge of the book business, particularly the market for antique books and first editions. Bancroft is a single woman with close friends but no life partner; however, she is bright and witty with a great zest for life and especially for English literature. (Frequent cutaways to the portrait of a sailor strongly hint at a past romance.) Hopkins is a very proper English gentleman who is married with a young family when they first became acquainted. He runs an efficient book business with a staff committed to the quality service he exemplifies. Judy Dench has a minor role as Frank's wife Nora, whose main appearance comes towards the end of the film. Bancroft's love of books sparks Frank's interest and he gives excellent service, which she reciprocates with warm, witty and very funny letters. She tries to burst his natural reserve. He is English to the very core, just as Bancroft is pure wool Manhattan. Over time, the relationship becomes very close. Anne Bancroft's character becomes like a family relative to the staff of Marks and Co, sending gifts of food to the London employees and their loved ones who are coping with post-war rations. At one point, Bancroft's friend visits London but does not connect with Frank who is out of the office at the time. A planned visit by Helene to coincide with the coronation of the Queen in 1953 is cancelled at the last moment; Frank is devastated. Will they ever meet?

For me, this is the kind of movie that starts out as a curiosity, becomes familiar and finishes being loved. My relationship with it is very much like that of the characters depicted.It's simple enough; a feisty but struggling all-American New York single-woman discovers a British Bookshop in London that has the kinds of books otherwise unavailable in her home city. She begins a series of purchases by mail-order and an intimate if platonic relationship develops between herself and its staff.That doesn't sound very promising. There's no action. Nobody is murdered, there are no reckless car-chases, not a hint of pyrotechnics. Moreover; there is no great spectacle either, no sweeping wide-angle pans. Almost the entire story is contained within a stuffy Charing Cross Road bookshop and the scarcely less stuffy apartment of the American customer, with brief sorties into the stuffy homes and lives of the other characters.Nevertheless; this movie has STORY in spades. We get to explore the microcosm of the characters' private lives, and the result is a spellbinding experience.Ann Bancroft is perfectly cast as the demanding, emancipated New Yorker who won't take 'no' for an answer when it comes to having the books of her dreams. Anthony Hopkins plays the shop manager with the sort of undemonstrative reserve that has become his hallmark when not eating people. These two lead a cast of nicely chosen and believable individuals - including Dame Judi Dench - who fill-out the fabric of their story. A great deal of the dialogue is composed of narrative, being the two leads effectively reading out their letters to each other. It's a great ploy, because by their means the story can be slowed or advanced in any way which might suit the circumstances.The movie takes us on a developing relationship that lasts for years, predating WW2, and then ever onwards. Times change, fortunes flourish and decline; people come and go. Some die. It's a bitter-sweet slice of life, of how we accomplish what we can, but seldom realise our dreams and must surrender to - yet be reconciled with - the unremitting passage of time.This is a great movie about human life on a human scale. Simple, hopeful, but ultimately in vain, it's all of our lives in the end. Collectible and highly recommended.

I find it interesting that so many people cannot grasp the notion that there are many kinds of friendships and many kinds of love affairs. So many people miss the point of the film. We've been taught to believe that lovers must consummate a relationship and become a couple. That our friends are only real if we know them in person. This movie is about how people we may never meet can enrich our lives. In the age of internet relationships, this story has a particularly significant voice. I chuckled when I read Roger Ebert's review of this movie. How he found it boring and wondered why Helene didn't just jump on a plane to London. Then what? Destroy his marriage? Uproot her career? Or worse, drag this genteel brit back to 1960s New York? The story is about how people can live comfortable, perhaps even mundane lives, and yet find sweet escape through books and letters. The relationship itself is nothing more than restrained words on paper, and yet it's as real as any relationship either of them have with people they see every day. It's real because they share the same passion for the written word. Yes, it is tragic that they never meet. You want them to, but realistically, you know they can't. In the end, we realize they were lovers the whole time, and their love transcended the physical obstacles that kept them apart.

Anyone who knows London knows and loves Charing Cross Road that has been able to resist any kind or urban change, even recent urban renovation, since I first stepped into it in 1960. I have walked it up to Tottenham Court Station and Road and down to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery more often than Champs Elysées in Paris or Broadway in New York. It is for me one street I love discovering every single time I am in London with all its book stores, Covent Garden on one side and Soho on the other side, Leicester square on that other side, and the National gallery at the bottom of the street not to speak of Saint Martin's in the Fields and its underground crypt where you can eat with the ghosts. Fifty years haunting that place, that road, its shops, theaters, churches and left or right hinterlands. The Strand next to it is nothing and I can live without ever setting one toe of one foot in it, but Charing Cross Road… This film is thus nostalgic about what it was, and still is, in spite of the death of two people and the closing of Marks books that I actually visited before it closed, or it might be another one, they were and are all just as beautiful and intriguing. But the film is not about nostalgia for some place you have visited and loved, not even a person you have loved and lived with in a way or another, but about a service you can only get from true secondhand bookstores because they don't sell books but they sell the books they love and cherish to people who love and cherish them just the same. These secondhand bookstores and booksellers have a charm that is not only quaint but is like an accomplice-ship in the crime of loving books, old books, beautiful books, books that have been used, visited and read by what we imagine are hundreds of people. The last book I got from England is from the University Library of Leeds, still with its barcode, its number, its Reference tag, its "not to be borrowed" tag and a book that was published in 1960, precisely, fifty years ago, a book no one can find any more except in university libraries and I have it on my desk, as if I had borrowed it and forgotten to give it back and left the country with it. That's what a second hand book is, and that's what this film is trying to make you feel by exploring the feelings of the bookseller and the customer, one in New York and the other in London, sharing (a perfect word for Charing Cross Street) the love of old books and the hunt and chase for them and the pleasure of a capture that can never be planned out and foreseen. No one can imagine what it means to hold an original edition of Walter Scott's novels and the communion with all those who have turned the fragile pages. Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins are rendering these feelings intertwined with real events from 1949 to the early 1960s, care packages and one coronation, plus plenty of New Year celebrations and Christmases, and we feel that spiritual love adventure among several grownups who will never meet and who are bringing together emotions and passions all connected to those books and the help one can bring to all the others in their hopes and sufferings. You will definitely see more of London than New York but London is the main character brought to life by two great actors and a sweet story.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Paris 8 Saint Denis, University Paris 12 Créteil, CEGID