84 Charing Cross Road (1987)
Review by Dindrane
Film:
DVD:

Written by Hugh Whitemore, based on the book by Helene Hanff
Directed by David Hugh Jones
Starring Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins, and Judi Dench

Features:

• none
  

Rating: PG

Anamorphic: Nope. Full-screen

My Advice: Rent it.

84 Charing Cross Road is a literary love story--love for books, for writing, for other people, and for an ideal of academia. Anne Bancroft plays Helene Hanff, a struggling New York writer having trouble getting her hands on the works of the English writers she adores. Soon she learns of an English bookstore, located at 84 Charing Cross Road, and writes to procure her missing classics. When Frank Doel (Anthony Hopkins) answers, there begins a correspondence that will continue for twenty years, even through the terrible years of World War II.

Part of the charm of the novel basis was the difference between Helene and Frank--Helene is very New York--brash, loud, and pointed. Frank, in contrast, is reserved, genteel, and the American stereotype of British academic. Such a play on clichés could easily degrade into tripe. Luckily for viewers of this disc, Bancroft and Hopkins do a wonderful job of bringing out the various peccadilloes of their respective characters without making them cardboard, one-dimensional "types."

84 Charing Cross Road makes many points, but one of the most interesting is how love and affection can transcend distance and difference. Helene and Frank are wildly different and lead very dissimilar lives, yet their friendship, always teetering on the edge of "romance," at least in the film version, grows all the stronger. This is particularly poignant toward the end of the film, when you remember that this movie was based upon a true-story novel by Helene Hanff herself.

There are, however, no extras on this disc to speak of. It's not even in widescreen, though given the indoors nature of the film, that's not much of an issue. It would have been nice to have had a commentary, though, or perhaps something from the author, Hanff. Perhaps they could have provided a text version of some of the letters quoted in the movie...something. Add that to a full-screen presentation, and it's nothing to write home about.

84 Charing Cross Road can be recommended to anyone who wants to see a movie of substance and feeling that isn't a shameless, transparent tearjerker. Bibliophiles will of course appreciate the companionship they will find in the characters of Frank and Helene. Alas, though, the movie is probably too steeped in self-aware intelligentsia to appeal to anyone who doesn't like sad movies, light romances, or anything about books and English writers. For those who enjoy literary films, though, 84 Charing Cross Road is like finding a first edition of some cherished text--perhaps not valuable in financial terms, but an unlooked for pleasure nonetheless.