84, Charing Cross Road

Back in 1987, one of the movies that I hear about getting a release, but never got the chance to watch because I wasn't really in a place to go to the local mall sixtyplex by myself was 84 Charing Cross Road. Over the years, I'd heard other people say some really good things about it, and it was one of those films I'd wanted to see. So when TCM ran it last August when Anne Bancroft was honored in Summer Under the Stars, I finally got the chance to record it and watch it.

I had known that the movie was based on an epistolary novel, but what I didn't realize is that it's actually based on a true story. Helene Hanff (played by Bancroft) is a woman who, as the movie opens, is getting on a plane to London. A big part of her visit is to get to the titular 84, Charing Cross Road (no comma in the title of the movie but apparently there is in the title of the book), which was the home of used book store Marks & Co. She gets there to find that the store is closed and workmen are renovating it into something else. But as with the opening of Twelve O'Clock High, this is a chance for all those old memories to come back....

Flash back to 1949. Helene Hanff is a research writer/script editor working in New York and living in the sort of apartment filled with books. She needs more books for her work, and is having a dickens of a time finding them in New York. In the Saturday Review of Literature, she sees an ad for Marks & Co., and decides to write to them to see if they have the books she needs. That letter is answered by Frank Doel (Anthony Hopkins), who fills the order and starts both a tab for Hanff and a long running correspondence between the two.

Helene responds, in some ways coming across as the character Bancroft played in Garbo Talks: the quintessential New York stereotype of a person who won't back down and do things her own way. The two also talk about their personal lives. Hanff is single, while Frank has a wife Nora (Judi Dench) and two daughters. Eventually, one of Frank's co-workers writes to Helene as well, and everybody in the store is interested in Helene, with the interest being mutual as the movie in part becomes a sort of retrospective of life for a certain class of British person over the course of 20 years.

Frank and the rest of the people in the store hope that perhaps Helene can make it to London some day, although this is the early 1950s when transatlantic travel is very expensive. Helene does make plans to get over to the UK, but financial issues keep coming up to prevent it. She has a friend who does stage acting and gets a part in a touring company that will be going to London. But when she goes to Marks & Co., she doesn't recognize Frank. The correspondence goes on, until.... Well, we know that Helene does make it to London but only after the store went out of business.

84 Charing Cross Road is the sort of movie that you'd think would have a tough time working, from the idea of adapting letters into a good movie to the fact that the two main characters never meet. And yet the movie is something very charming, thanks in part to Bancroft's very American performance and Hopkins' very British performance. Perhaps for people who are more used to current-day movies from the 2020s, 84 Charing Cross Road may seem a bit old-fashioned and tough to get into. But for anyone who likes classic film, I think they'll very much enjoy it.

You've got a lovely daughter

TCM's 31 Days of Oscar tends to bring a selection of movies to the channel that is on average more recent. I do, of course, say "more recent" in the sense of only being closer to the present day that the regular selection of TCM movies. One such film that I've got on my DVR only goes back to 1997: Mrs Brown, which airs tonight (Feb. 5) at 8:00 PM on TCM.

Judi Dench plays Queen Victoria, and the opening title cards give some background information to anyone who might not know that much about British history. Victoria came to the throne at the age of 18 in 1837, even before she got married to Prince Albert. By all accounts this was a happy marriage, right up until Albert's death at a relatively young age even by the standards of the day back in 1861. As a result of her beloved husband's death, Victoria went into a period of mourning that lasted for years. This greatly worried many of the people around Victoria, both for personal reasons and the fact that some in Britain began to question the institution of a monarchy.

With that in mind, someone in the entourage around Victoria comes up with an idea. Prince Albert liked to go horseback riding and hunting up at Balmoral Castle in the Scottish Highlands. There, he was assisted by an able servant and highlands guide named John Brown (Billy Connolly). Why not bring Brown down to the Isle of Wight where Victoria is holed up, if you can call it that for such a large entourage, and perhaps Victoria can, with at least horseback riding, take the first steps toward resuming her public duties.

John heads south, and shows able duty, although to the point that it's irritating for the rest of the folks at court because he's so unorthodox and doesn't understand the first thing about royal protocol. He reasons he has no way of knowing when Her Majesty is going to ride, and since not being there when she does would be a problem, he stands in the courtyard with her pony waiting, which is just not the way things are done. And logically, you'd think Brown should know that they'll come to the stables to look for him. Eventually, however, Victoria does want to go for a ride, and Brown accompanies her.

It's the start of a devoted friendship, the nature of which is not truly known by historians even to this day. Brown has an inability to adhere to strict protocol, and his blunt ways shock both the court and the servants. At the same time, however, it seems to be having a bit of a positive effect on Her Majesty, resulting in Brown's promotion. And she really lets loose, at least by the stereotypical standards of Victorian propriety people generally think of when they think of the morality of that era, when the court goes up to Balmoral.

And Her Majesty still hasn't really resumed public duties in the way she's supposed to, such as the "throne speech" that opens a new session of the House of Commons. Prime Minister Disraeli comes north to try to persuade Victoria to do her duty. And with Brown taking an increasingly active role in the royal household, others are resenting him to the point that there's some palace intrigue. Brown is accosted in the stables and beaten, with it being made to look like he was extremely intoxicated. Brown offers to resign, but Victoria won't have it. Brown eventually becomes head of security, but the power is going to his head and his devotion is making him paranoid.

Mrs Brown is another example of the sort of historical drama that the British seem to do such a fine job of making, especially in the era once movies didn't become so tied to the studio lots and moviemakers could do more location shooting. Britain has much more heritage than the US and uses it to full advantage in movies like this. Judi Dench, unsurprisingly, does an excellent job as Victoria, picking up an Oscar nomination. Billy Connolly is also quite good, and the movie is always relatively lovely to look at although it doesn't have that rich a color palette. (There's a lot of green and brown in the Scottish Highlands, I guess.)

I had never actually seen Mrs Brown before, but I'm definitely glad I did watch it. You should too.

A Room With a View

It's time for another of the movies that I had the chance to record thanks to the free preview of the Showtime channels. That would be the Merchant-Ivory film A Room With a View. It's going to be on again tomorrow, at noon on Flix, so once again, I made a point of watching it in order to be able to do a review on it here.

It's 1907, and there's a class of idle rich Britons who are able to go on long vacations to all sorts of places in Europe, such as Florence, Italy. One such pair are you Lucy Honeychurch (Helena Bonham Carter) and her much older cousin Charlotte Bartlett (Maggie Smith). They get to the pension where they'll be staying, and are disappointed to see that they've got a room at the back of the place, which means it overlooks an alleyway rather than having one of those great views of the palazzo and piazza and Arno river and the like.

This gets brought up at dinner, which is one of those affairs when everybody is expected to eat at roughly the same time, so a large group of Britons are at the same table along with Lucy and Charlotte. Among them are the Emersons, a father (Denholm Elliott) who is there as much for his health as for the tourism, and his adult son George (Julian Sands). George immediately offers to switch suites with the two women so that they can have a view, he already having had it and not needing more of it. Charlotte isn't so sure that young Lucy should be talking to a strange unmarried young man without responsible adults having introduced the pair first.

These being Brits abroad and not too many of them, it's unsurprising that they're an insular little community, constantly bumping into each other in the same places because they use the same guidebooks. So eventually George and Lucy not only bump into one another again, but spend a little time walking around the back streets of Florence. And then, when Lucy and Charlotte on one hand and the Emersons on another wind up renting carriages to see the countryside and have some picnics, George takes Lucy and kisses her, thinking they're alone. Charlotte sees it and is horrified, after which Lucy and Charlotte return to England.

Back in England, Lucy lives with her mother and her younger brother Freddy (Rupert Graves), waiting to reach the age where she'll receive her inheritance, and being called on by men such as Cecil Vyse (Daniel Day-Lewis), who eventually proposes to Lucy and the proposal is accepted. Meanwhile, the local vicar has a cottage sitting idle that he's planning to rent out to make some money for the parish. Somebody met the Emersons down in London, and suggested to the vicar that old Mr. Emerson be a tenant. This leads to George coming up on the weekends to visit his father, and naturally running into Lucy again as a result. Mom, of course, doesn't know anything about what happened between Lucy and George in Florence because Charlotte didn't tell her.

George, being a passionate man, is still in love with Lucy. But, of course, she's engaged to Cecil, who is exactly the opposite of George. In a world where Lucy would never have expected to see George again, it's easy enough to compromise and marry Cecil. But now that he's back, she has to lie to herself about not being in love with George.

The story in A Room With a View is a darn good one, although the relatively slow Edwardian pacing and the romance may mean it won't appeal to some viewers, especially younger males. And it's not really a family movie, especially with one skinny-dipping scene which, while tastefully done, is still there. But the movie is absolutely worth the watch for everyone else, thanks in part to the fine performances, and in part to the production values. Merchant and Ivory make the film look gorgeous.

If you haven't seen A Room With a View before, I can highly recommend it.