I saw this movie in 1987, read the book, and just rented it again in memory of Anne Bancroft. It remains for me a gem-an amazingly done story. What is really amazing however-and a sad comment on where people's attentions are focused-is that in 1987 there were two movies that dealt with married men and single women. This was one of them; the other was "Fatal Attraction." What a difference! People flocked to see the latter film in which (spoilers for "F.A." here) a single urban career woman has a brief affair with a married man, tries to kill herself, tries to kill everyone else, fricassees a pet rabbit, etc. Now in "84 Charing Cross Road," the heroine's finances prevent her from crossing the ocean to actually meet the married man of her daydreams- but even if she had been able to visit England and meet him,I doubt she would have baked his children's pets or kidnapped his children. This was not,thankfully,that kind of film. This was a true story of a single career woman whose life was happy in spite of her being single. She had friends, her writing, the books she was buying and reading. We see at one point a photograph on her bureau of a man in uniform-was this a former boyfriend,a fiancé,who was killed in the war? Possibly-but the woman does not live in grief nor does she go melodramatically crazy. It's too bad that America chose to make the derivative trash that is "F.A." popular while not honoring "84 Charing Cross Road" for its depiction of a brainy adult relationship.
Review of 84 Charing Cross Road
