When a movie spins your head with memories of yesterday

 

THE OLDER I GET, the more I yearn for the nostalgia of years gone by, especially in the Arts: Music, Television, Movies, People, Places and Events. I guess we are all like that.

The first time I watched Ann Bancroft on the big screed was in 1967 in the brave new world movie The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman. 

Those were the days when we were all relatively peaceful, very safe, with the wind in our hair, and really not a care in the world, not too many shillings in our pockets, but virtually every new experience (the great, good ones anyway) have become the stuff our dreams and the progressive encyclopaedia of our lives. For most of us, it was great to be young. Sure, there was pain and suffering, but we bore that with courage only the young years of our lives can suffer with courage.

All around us, lots and lots of young people were doing amazing things. Not all, some were unfortunate. We remember them too. This is our twilight hour … each day brings us news of a friend’s passing and our hearts ache and ache with every new loss. Similarly, as short-term memory loss continues to erase that which we remember with cinemascopic definition, today some of us can’t until we meet someone who can … and for a few moments at least our minds are set at rest.

Still, bravely with a smile and “chuuch” (you know that sound) here and there, we prepare ourselves for the challenges of the next hour.

Like I said, I am a sucker for old movies. I used to be a dedicated fan of the BritBox, the British streaming service of British cinema and television.

When I watched 84 Charing Cross Road (1987) recently I tried to remember the number of times I had watched it. I forget. But I have never forgotten the impact it had on me: I was always blown away by the brilliance of the writing and, of course, the equal brilliance of Anthony Hopkins and Ann Bancroft. Remember we watch Ann 20 years earlier in the movie that had us all young guys slightly hot and bothered: The Graduate, opposite Dustin Hoffman.

A review by that great fine man Cole Smithey: “84 Charing Cross Road” is about bonds of friendship formed and maintained by a mutual love of literature or, more to the point, books.

Anne Bancroft’s earthy portrayal of real-life playwright and script-reader Helene Hanff (pronounced hell-ane han-f) is so effortless and effervescent that it’s enough to turn a generation of young women into chain-smoking, gin-swigging writers, if not full-fledged admirers of beautifully bound editions by the likes of Jane Austin, George Orwell, Chaucer, or Plato.

Helene Hanff was famous for saying that she never read fiction because she could “never get interested in things that didn’t happen to people who never lived.”

Personally, I know exactly where Hanff was coming from, and I concur. So it is that the nature of this film, directed by David Jones, calmly emphasizes the immediate surroundings and social conditions of its characters from the late ‘40s to the late ‘60s.

Love of poetry and the written word is intrinsic in the fabric of the narrative. Nothing is strained, even when characters break the forth wall after earning sufficient trust from its audience. We are glad to be spoken to directly. It’s a loving gesture that arrives as a reward.  

Helene Hanff lives in a weathered brownstone apartment on 95^th Street off Central Park in Manhattan’s Carnegie Hill. The address is actually on 94th Street between Fifth Avenue and Madison. She frequents an actual bookstore at 1313 Madison that is still in business at the time of this writing. Unable to locally acquire the specific titles that her ever-hungry literary appetite requires, she responds to an ad for Marks & Co., a London-based antiquarian bookseller overseen by Anthony Hopkins’ Frank P. Doel. What follows is a 20-year relationship of loving commerce elucidated by letters written back and forth across the pond.

 

Oh, what a difference casting makes. There can be little doubt that the separate but resonating chemistry between Bancroft and Hopkins rings as a clarion bell of mesmerizing harmony. Through their constant correspondence, we savour Hanff’s lean sense of nearly ribald humour as it rubs on the dry paint of Frank Doel’s heartfelt sense of honest propriety. It should be noted that Judi Dench’s restrained performance as Doel’s loyal but tightly-wound Irish wife Nora adds a layer of stoic resolve to the couple’s marriage.

 

The primary action of the story revolves around Hanff’s written requests for specific books that she augments with gifts of food stuffs meant for the appreciative staff of Marks & Co., located at the address of the film’s title. Hanff always sends cash.

So it is that the seemingly pedestrian story catches the viewer off guard when the cumulative emotional effect takes its inevitable toll in a tear-jerking sequence of satisfying catharsis. “84 Charing Cross Road” is a valuable film for all of the right reasons of theatrical balance and narrative truth. It is a movie that hits you like a live play. I can think of no higher compliment for the source material of soul-bearing experience.