After so many years of watching movies, I have learned not to exclude any country or any type of movies, except for overly disgusting horror movies and some extremely mentally retarded movies, and I also know that even my favorite European movies let me down opportunities are equally great. But there is one exception, that is, the British stories of the past years shot by the British will always have the same graceful endowment as the Victorian British, delicate, delicate, warm, restrained, and rarely disappointing. Tonight, I, who wanted to be nostalgic in a pretentious way, once again relied on the guidance of my past experience to translate the British film "84 Charing Cross, London" which was badly translated by the disc dealer as "Blood Shadow". Cross Road) into my disc player.
A poor American female writer named Helen Hanff, widowed and living alone, down and down, somewhat acerbic, not beautiful, with an almost neurotic madness for British classical literature, but she could not afford to buy the new edition of English literature books in the New York bookstore, so she listed the book. I sent it to an antique bookstore in London I stumbled across in a book review magazine. Unexpectedly, she soon received the second-hand book she asked for, the old edition decades ago, beautifully bound, soft page texture, and unexpectedly low price, she was ecstatic. As a result, she and the English shopkeeper named Frank Doerr began to go back and forth frequently, and wrote to and from each other. As a result, the two strangers became the most intimate friends. It was post-war 1949, and greetings and books staggered across the Atlantic for 20 years. In the past 20 years, things have changed, Helen has become a well-known writer, and Frank gradually passed away, taking away the regret of never meeting and leaving a touching friendship.
In fact, they could have met. Helen planned to go to England to watch the ceremony when the queen was coronated, but was forced to abandon the plan because of dental surgery. She waited nonchalantly for the next opportunity, but finally came the bad news she never expected. No one will ever answer her well-meaning sarcasm with the characteristic silence and generosity, no one will remember a book she mentioned two or three years ago, which on a sunny morning would suddenly be dusted off from some noble mansion in England. The bookshelves came to her mailbox, and no one could judge her interest in books just from her few comments, and send her the most favorite version, and her Christmas gift was regarded as a post-war Londoner who was deprived of material. Favorite cans of ham and stockings no longer have a delivery address. If you are also a bookworm outside of the Internet, reading, buying books, and loving books, you will understand the reliance Helen has developed over the past 20 years on Frank and his bookstore. That relationship is like fish and water, like breath and air, Like a writer and his typewriter, so even if the book she wants to buy is available in a bookstore a few blocks away, even if she can afford the high prices of books in New York, she is used to having Frank, who is far away, find it hard for her. Then send it back. It's like she didn't go to England for decades, not only because of money, but also because she stubbornly guarded the classical literary dream of England in her heart. In the past 20 years, the books that Frank has searched for and bought for her are piled up on the floor, which quietly hides her sweat, her talent, her loneliness, and her soul. Helen sold her collection of antique books and came to London, standing alone in an empty bookstore, facing the vacated bookshelves, facing Frank's old and bulky desk, recalling decades of friendship without grief, face The most innocent and warm smile appeared on her face, as if Frank was still standing in front of her unsmilingly across time and space as he had been in twenty years.
I vaguely remember where I read the introduction to this female writer and her autobiography, and I don't bother to look it up, they are not important. Everyone who loves books and this movie will be like me, like a drunken fish caught in the whirlpool of old-fashioned movies, old-fashioned emotions and old-fashioned details: because of the love of English literature, Stubbornly longing to enter but not daring to approach that beautiful island country, only in sheepskin books, imagining and narrating infinitely close to "Britain in English literature", that is Shakespeare's England, with Chaucer's stories, with Hardy's There are also dank Dickensian streets and dimly lit bookstores; women who never remember to tidy up their rooms and dress up, but carry in their pockets a collection of gilded love poems from the era of Elizabeth I from across the sea, Go to the lawn in the sun in Central Park and enjoy the beautiful spring day that belongs to love. Anne Bancroft played this humorous and lovely female bookworm and Anthony Hopkins played the indifferent and delicate, kind-hearted bookstore manager, on this night, it was so deeply in my heart .
The movie is very British, but not the old-fashioned Britain, but the warm, humorous Britain. In the winter of post-war Britain, despite the scarcity of materials and the cold weather, people are still stubbornly optimistic, orderly, polite, and the countryside is sunny and green. The DVD's tidbits also introduce a British film, James Avery's "Leave of the Days", also in this category, which I like, but "84 Charing Cross, London" is closer to him "A Room with a View", is the same elegant and calm, but not dry, but has a light and cheerful beauty.
If you love books, like the solid and warm feeling of rubbing the pages with your fingers, and the fragrance of the faint ink, if you like to hang on to the ancient streets alone in a strange city, and listen carefully to the empty echoes of the passing years, if you know how to appreciate and enjoy "Flowers fall like rain, people pale like chrysanthemums" gentle and casual friendship, not intense love... If, under the right conditions, you are a somewhat nostalgic person, such as the right temperature and humidity, like now There is a lonely sound of rain outside my window, or the lazy afternoon sun shines in through the floral curtain, such as just putting down a book that makes you understand, resting your eyes in the music, a certain passage in the book Can't help but let you give birth to the sigh of "I have a relationship with me". For example, you have just said goodbye to two or three friends and came back under the moonlight, and there is still the lingering fragrance of old wine in your mouth, then you will definitely like this movie. Movie. Put this disc into your disc player, there will be a long-lost familiar and unfamiliar emotion, like the faint scent of books, drifting over through the soft images, drowning you happily and tenderly.
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