84 Charing Cross Road

I love this film - and it is a film, not a movie, though the distinction is perhaps not one that everyone makes, to me it's the difference between Jane Austen and John Grisham - one will live forever, the other comes in and out of your life with barely a moment's pause. And as there are not many books that, to me, deserve the label classic, so it is with movies that deserve to be called films. 84 Charing Cross Road is one that not only deserves the label, but helps define the category. In light of this, when I see that it's on I watch it.

The film is based on a true story and the screenplay written by the woman who lived it - I have no doubt that this is part of what makes it so alive. Often billed as a romance, it is not a love story in the traditional sense, but a story of a man and woman who share a love of books and become friends - friends in the true sense of the word, not in the fleeting, casual sense that permeates society today - because of that shared interest through letters from her to the London bookshop where he works and his responses in the shipments of books back to her in New York. Gradually the friendships expand to encompass not just Frank Doel and Helene Hanff but the other members of the Marks and Co. staff as well as Frank's wife.

I don't know what it is about this story that moves me, but it never ceases to do so.

If you've never seen it, I really recommend it - I don't think it can be categorized into "chick flick" though it certainly isn't a fast moving action flick either. That said, Tim will watch it with me on occasion and enjoy it, though it doesn't speak to him as much as it does me. But if the idea behind the story isn't enough to tempt you, watch it for the extraordinary acting of Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins and Judi Dench. That alone makes it an enjoyable hour and a half.