USA,
1986, 97 min
Shown in 1987
CREDITS
- dir
-
David Jones
- prod
-
Geoffrey Hellman
- scr
-
Hugh Whitmore
- cam
-
Brian West
- cast
-
Anne Bancroft, Anthony Hopkins, Judi Dench
- source
-
Columbia Pictures, Columbia Plaza, Burbank, CA.
-
COMMENTS
David Jones in person.
OTHER
An uncommonly and sweetly civilized adult romance between two transatlantic correspondents who never meet. This film is appealing on several counts, one of the most notable being Anne Bancroft’s fantastic performance in the leading role. She brings Helene Hanff alive in all her dimensions and in the process creates one of her most memorable characterizations. The voluble, opinionated Manhattanite on the one hand, she is also very alone in her books, cigarettes and booze. A significant part of her emotional life is tied up in her love of London and literature, which are inextricably linked with Doel (Anthony Hopkins) the bookstore owner in London with whom she corresponds. Director David Jones, who did such a fine job with the screen version of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, is both tactful and precise in his work here. With very delicate material, he has managed to plant numerous depth charges that detonate with increasing power along the way.
—Todd McCarthy, Variety
FACTOID #27
A surrealist stop-motion animator, the Czech Jan Svankmajer, was the first recipient of the Golden Gate Persistence of Vision Award in 1997. The POV Award honors the lifetime achievement of a filmmaker who works outside of feature-length narrative filmmaking.
