84 Charing Cross Road
|
List Price: Our Price: $8.97 You Save: $5.98 (40%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $7.41 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of 84 Charing Cross Road
Movie Review: We are all in love with the unknown
Summary: 5 Stars
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
Movie Review: From My world I send these thoughts...
Summary: 5 Stars
Movies like this are so remarkable.
For one thing they aren't violent, there isn't danger, things don't blow up, you aren't chased, no ones getting murdered. I really myself won't go to that again in this life. Sorry. Over it... They might not even be beautiful physically to watch in the unfolding of the story line, another wonderful feature, altho here they are. It's a deceptively real kind of story that feels like a life you might want to look into, vicariously try.
Perhaps a relating that wraps you in the love these two shared through a lifetime of letters wouldn't appeal to everyone, but watching two physically attractive, vapid stars careen around in current love stories with houses and background settings costing several million if "in" the real world seems too vacuous for a love setting to me. It doesn't appeal to much of anything in me. This really isn't the Enquirer come to life with a script.
Three of the most important relationships in my life evolved through writing. The most important one was written there. Not to be self involved, so the tenderness of this bookshop owner in England and the writer in New York, their writing and their unfolding what surely is a love, surely of a kind, that resonated. As did the times of their lives, seasons. Heck I loved the apartment and the bookshop ( loved that as much as any of it ) never failing to be thrilled by how the settings figured in the movie. It was such an intimate reality almost a play. Almost.
I will admit that I've watched this quite a few times over the years and after once or twice cannot go all the way (to the end), it's beautiful and I'm like that. It's poignant, I'm aware to speak to it is a spoiler though quite oddly the etiquettes here seem to deny and demand analysis. But of that ending how interesting that the characters were written in such a way that neither in the length of their relating ever hurt the other, they valued one another so highly. How rare and to be treasured is that kind of knowing.
Letter writing has been replaced by the e world. Faster, glibber, more corrective, snappier, more unkind, disposable relations, meeting a need, finding faults, weighing another, it can feel frenzied, characterized by telling another how you either have to go or cannot continue to actually put effort into some thoughts to share over how you are pulled there from the difficulties of life to share, it isn't what relating in letters once was....no...many won't supply the correct name or an address to get a letter or card because while writing and sharing is ok, I suppose the idea is they can't "risk" that with "you", a strangeness not of this movie. No. This was more of what price we've paid, the loss of truly getting to know another over knowing your own snapping judgment.
Anyway a simple story of two friends that shared a love of books, one ordering, one selling, suggesting tto one another works that were delightful to observe for a book lover, a continent away enduring the changes through time building over many years such strong mutual understandings and respect for each other that their roles in each others life became inconceivably gift like.
A very lovely piece to watch.
Movie Review: Distant Cares for Book Lovers
Summary: 5 Stars
Authors are fond of saying that the written word can take people anywhere, thinking no doubt of the intense relationship that a reader can have with an engaging author's writing. 84 Charing Cross Road explores a different dimension of how the written word travels: the role of correspondence, a virtually lost art today. The movie deftly displays how you can share your heart with someone you've never met.
The movie is based on 20 years of actual correspondence between New York author Helene Hanff and Frank Doel, the manager of a small London book store. Hanff's in-your-face New York energy and candor are what make the exchange meaningful to viewers. Hanff is a $40 a week script reader as the movie begins but has an affection for British nonfiction that leaves her frustrated with a lack of out-of-print titles in New York. Seeing a small advertisement in The Saturday Review, she writes to Marks & Co. in London (located at 84 Charing Cross Road) asking with trepidation for used books that cost less than $5 each and requesting specific titles.
The movie handles this distance relationship by alternating between receiving and sending correspondence and revealing little bits of the daily lives of those involved. At the core, however, is always a shared passion for books and good writing. The two styles of communicating could not be more different: Hanff doesn't edit her inner thoughts when writing, and Doel is proper and reticent.
The correspondence and relationship take an unexpected turn when Hanff learns how little fresh food English people are allowed during post-war rationing but how cheap it is to send some from Denmark. With a good heart, she sends off a first package . . . and then fears she may offend by having sent a ham to people who keep kosher.
A film like this obviously depends on some pretty special acting. Anne Bancroft does a wonderful job of being breezy, but intense, in her performance. I loved the scenes where a cigarette dangles precariously from her mouth as she pounds away with two fingers on an old manual typewriter. The role of the reserved Doel is more of a challenge, but Anthony Hopkins manages to capture the interest and delight that a reserved man might enjoy in lighthearted correspondence. Judi Dench plays Doel's wife in a role that shows versatility from the roles that you know her better for.
Unlike many films, this one has a heart. The actors are turned loose to play their roles in extreme ways (especially Bancroft) and the sentimentality works. Some of the most fun moments are when she turns to the camera and addresses the audience with a sparkle in her eyes.
As I watched the film, I was reminded of the idea that relationships are more important than issues. Even when Hanff was angry about something, she would still be solicitous about the people at 84 Charing Cross Road she cared for.
Movie Review: A Woman of Mystery
Summary: 5 Stars
There are many people who come into our lives as a result of books. That common love of books can spark many a friendship.
Imagine living in the middle of a society so unaware of the books you crave. Imagine no Amazon. No free shipping! No forums dedicated to your favorite authors.
Finding a friend who shares your love of the newest self-published novel is rare enough. Imagine finding a soul mate who understands your love for books written a century ago. Imagine finding someone who shared your love of inexpensive rare editions and could find them for you for under $5.
Helene Hanff (Anne Bancroft) shows all the signs of being a hopeless bibliophile. She is an eccentric script reader who makes just enough money to survive and yet dreams of owning copies of old books from an antiquarian bookstore. She is quite the character with a delicious sense of humor and always speaks her mind.
"I never can get interested in things that didn't happen to people who never lived." -Helene
When she is told that readers in New York are not reading British books by British writers, she can't believe that English literature is not read in New York! She finds an English bookseller's address and writes a letter asking for a few books to be sent to her in New York.
She first contacts Frank Doel (Anthony Hopkins) on October 5th, 1949. Through the years Frank is able to find books she is dying to read and Helene shows her appreciation by sending small packages to his office for all the employees and for his family. She ships food to them they never see or only can obtain through the black market.
Some of Helene's letters are so hilarious. I think I laughed almost once every time she was writing. It is such a brash contrast with Frank's very British formality.
Helene seems quite infatuated with all things British and even attempts a Yorkshire Pudding for her friends in New York. They are all most impressed.
What struck me most boldly about this rather serene movie was the beautiful way in which Frank and Helene touched one another's lives through simple sentiments and occasional packages. A gift, a word, a sentence of encouragement. The letters are read while scenes play out in each country.
Frank's wife is played by Judi Dench who looks most radiant. She also writes occasional letters to Helene.
While Helene and Frank write beautiful letters back and forth, Helene's true love really seems to be books. Frank is just one of the only souls alive who seems to understand her constant obsession with reading.
A beautiful expression of pure friendship.
~The Rebecca Review
Movie Review: A charming story to warm the cockles of any bibliophile's or Anglophile's heart!
Summary: 5 Stars
I had never heard of Helene Hanff until about two years ago when I chanced upon this little gem of a movie that has stayed with me ever since. I have watched this movie often since then, and find delight in it every single time. Also, I have read Helene Hanff's book of the same title, and it makes for a wonderful read indeed.
84 Charing Cross Road is a love story of sorts - of two people brought together [though they live on separate continents] by their love of books, it is also a love of the old-fashioned way of correspondence, through letters, and a love of the written word. It also heavily alludes to a strong affection felt by the two leads for each other - Helene Hanff as portrayed by the wonderful Anne Bancroft [aka Mrs Robinson of The Graduate], and Frank Doel, the manager of the London bookstore at 84 Charing Cross Road [played by well-known thespian Sir Anthony Hopkins, a much younger Hopkins at that].
The story focuses on these two characters who lead different lives on different continents - one in NY and the other in London, yet who share a mutual love for books and the written word. Ms Hanff, a struggling writer finds it difficult to obtain obscure works of English literature in New York ['doesn't anyone read English Literature in New York?] and decides to send out a plea for help to an English bookstore, Marks and Co.. Frank Doel, the manager of the store seems delighted by the request and obliges Ms Hanff with a few volumes as requested, and thus begins a wonderful friendship that lasts almost 20 years.
What I loved about this movie was the contrast between the two leads - the New Yorker with an acerbic wit who is always very vocal, and the mild-mannered English gentleman. This is done with such finesse that you don't feel like its a cliche at all - thanks in large part to the wonderful 'chemistry' between the two leads, and their acting prowess.
A story of true soulmates, brought together by a mutual love of books. This is a movie that will appeal to all bibliophiles and Anglophiles [and Ms Hanff is certainly both] as well as those who have a penchant for literary movies. Though the quality of the DVD leaves much to be desired [the picture quality, lack of features], the story itself is worth viewing and I can't recommend it highly enough!