84 Charing Cross Road (1987)

This movie is as much about books as Bull Durham is about baseball or Rocky is about boxing. It is a story about people and relationships and the myriad things that can happen while we experience this thing called life. If a wonderfully acted, beautifully written movie dealing with that theme interests you then turn off the telephone, put the kids to bed, and curl up for an entrancing experience.

Fmovies: 84 Charing Cross Road is a wonderful enchanting film about the differences and similarities between the Brits and the New Yorkers over the years. Helene Hanff really was a special writer. She gave an identity to 84 Charing Cross Road to last a lifetime. Her letter writing relationship between a bookstore and herself is one of legendary stories to become part of London and New York. Sadly, she died 5 years ago. I am sure that 84 Charing Cross Road will always remember the writer, Helene Hanff, who inspired such a legacy. Anyway the film has a wonderful cast like Anne Bancroft who is ageless in the role. Sir Anthony Hopkins as the bookseller. Dame Judi Dench as his wife and Maurice Denham in a supporting role. Also, I have been to London three more times since I wrote this review and sadly this time, I made the effort to visit 84 Charing Cross Road, sorry folks, it's a Pizza Hut and I had dinner there tonight anyway. THere is no plaque. I still think Anne Bancroft was superb now that she's gone. So has Maurice Denham since I last wrote this review. God Bless them wherever they are.

I recently saw this film for the first time, as a chance to see an Anne Bancroft film I had not seen before. Bancroft and Hopkins are both excellent in this. And, more than almost any other film, they have to be excellent; their performances are the only thing this little film hangs on.

Everything about this film violates almost every "screenwriting 101" type rule. The two main characters communicate primarily through letters. Characters address the audience directly. There is no real conflict. Change occurs only with the natural passage of time in the characters' lives. No heroes, no villains. No romance, no violence, no adventures- just two people (one a writer, the other a rare-book dealer) living their lives and caring about how the other leads theirs.

And yet, the film works. Over the span of the 20+ years portrayed in the film, the audience gets to know and like both of the main characters, and their compatriots as well. And just getting to know them and their unique friendship makes it all worthwhile.

Also, the portrayal of the privations of the post-war U.K. of rations and food shortages is done very well. Michael Palin, amongst others, have addressed the tragicomic aspects of postwar rationing in the U.K., but in this film, it is poignant how even a poor American managed to make the entire bookstore's Christmases worthwhile with a well-timed shipment of Danish food.

84 Charing Cross Road fmovies. A fantastic piece of work. This movie is for those who are interested in dialogue and masterful acting. The acting is impeccable and the dialogue is magnificent and very touching. Surely Anthony Hopkins deserved an AA and so did Anne Bancfroft.

This movie is an example of how the cinematic medium can powerfully explore a mundane activity as letter writing. The movement of the characters through their activities and concerns over different times of life and across 2 physically separated cultures is smooth, subtle and engaging. The movie does not contain the bombast that many others seem to be more pre-occupied with. Rather the viewer is taken into the quiet enjoyment of human conversation and communication. And just like a good conversation, one is left with both satisfaction and longing.

I saw this movie in 1987, read the book, and just rented it again in memory of Anne Bancroft. It remains for me a gem-an amazingly done story. What is really amazing however-and a sad comment on where people's attentions are focused-is that in 1987 there were two movies that dealt with married men and single women. This was one of them; the other was "Fatal Attraction." What a difference! People flocked to see the latter film in which (spoilers for "F.A." here) a single urban career woman has a brief affair with a married man, tries to kill herself, tries to kill everyone else, fricassees a pet rabbit, etc. Now in "84 Charing Cross Road," the heroine's finances prevent her from crossing the ocean to actually meet the married man of her daydreams- but even if she had been able to visit England and meet him,I doubt she would have baked his children's pets or kidnapped his children. This was not,thankfully,that kind of film. This was a true story of a single career woman whose life was happy in spite of her being single. She had friends, her writing, the books she was buying and reading. We see at one point a photograph on her bureau of a man in uniform-was this a former boyfriend,a fiancé,who was killed in the war? Possibly-but the woman does not live in grief nor does she go melodramatically crazy. It's too bad that America chose to make the derivative trash that is "F.A." popular while not honoring "84 Charing Cross Road" for its depiction of a brainy adult relationship.