Thanks to my new Netflix subscription, I recently rented 84, Charing Cross Road, the movie adaptation of the book, starring Anthony Hopkins and Ann Bancroft.
Bancroft plays Helene Hanff, the feisty and funny New Yorker who writes one day to Marks & Co., Booksellers, to enquire about some used books. She gets a response by F.P.D, or Frank Doel, played to perfection by Anthony Hopkins, and their correspondence is conducted over the course of twenty years, from 1949-1969, although they never meet. Judi Dench plays Doel’s wife, Nora. All three actors bring the characters to from the book to life wonderfully. The only thing is, I wish I could have been alive at the time Marks & Co. was in operation—the bookstore of the movie is my ideal of a bookstore, with walls lined with shelf upon shelf of nothing but old books. If you liked the book, be sure to watch the movie as well. This is one of my new favorite movies.
Bancroft plays Helene Hanff, the feisty and funny New Yorker who writes one day to Marks & Co., Booksellers, to enquire about some used books. She gets a response by F.P.D, or Frank Doel, played to perfection by Anthony Hopkins, and their correspondence is conducted over the course of twenty years, from 1949-1969, although they never meet. Judi Dench plays Doel’s wife, Nora. All three actors bring the characters to from the book to life wonderfully. The only thing is, I wish I could have been alive at the time Marks & Co. was in operation—the bookstore of the movie is my ideal of a bookstore, with walls lined with shelf upon shelf of nothing but old books. If you liked the book, be sure to watch the movie as well. This is one of my new favorite movies.
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