Hanover Street (1979)

Harrison Ford is impossibly young and handsome as an American pilot in the World War II romance Hanover Street; Lesley-Anne Down (The Great Train Robbery) is stunningly beautiful as the British nurse who falls in love with him, despite being married to British intelligence agent Christopher Plummer. In fact, everything about Hanover Street is just a little over the top, from the insanely romantic dialogue to the absurd war-buddy banter of Ford and his bomber crew to the love-making montage in which Down seems to have at least a dozen orgasms. Down and Plummer have a daughter (played by future Lethal Weapon 2 love interest Patsy Kensit) who's so precious and precocious you just want to smack her. The whole thing is almost a camp pastiche of a war romance--but when Ford and Plummer find themselves together behind enemy lines, you'll suddenly discover that you're caught up in the story. Through sheer movie-star charisma and cunningly ridiculous plot mechanics, Hanover Street becomes not only entertaining, but even touching. Plummer is particularly good as an ordinary man who wishes to become something more, Ford is stalwart as only he can be, and Down is just too lovely to resist (it's hard to understand how her career ended up with the likes of Beastmaster 3: The Eye of Braxus and Death Wish 5: The Face of Death). All in all, a surprisingly enjoyable cinematic experience. --Bret Fetzer Amazon.com

Hanover Street

This is a great Harrison Ford movie, and probably not seen by a lot of people. Christopher Plummer also does some great acting. One of my
favorite movies.
Barbara S Taylor July 2, 2008

Silly but highly enjoyable

One of the delights of DVD - even more than video - is that its insatiable desire for fresh product sees the resurrection of swathes of unloved would-be blockbusters that no self-respecting cinematheque would ever include in any retrospective and which would otherwise be left to rot in time-compressed panned-and-scanned graveyard slots on network TV just before the infomercials start. These aren't the forgotten or under-appreciated masterpieces awaiting rediscovery, but rather the misjudged, the misbegotten or the just plain mistimed, films before or after their time that never found their audience and, until the advent of DVD, would never have been given the chance.

Hanover Street fits into all those categories at once. Intended both as a throwback to 1940s tearjerkers and an epic Summer event movie that would launch Harrison Ford to stardom (something that would still be another two years and a bullwhip away), it proved a major box-office failure and a source of much critical derision - not quite the Battlefield: Earth of its day, but close. It's easy to understand why, but, dammit, it is fun. Maybe not always in the ways its makers intended, but fun nonetheless.

Ford is the bomber pilot with nerves of steel and no fear of death or heavy anti-aircraft fire - or at least until he falls in love with nice English girl Lesley Anne Down and starts to scrub missions because the engine never sounds quite right as he finds something to live for. To prove to himself and the various whisperers at the airbase that he's still got what it takes, he volunteers himself and his crew (including John Ratzenberger who, pre-Cheers, must have starred in almost every single US movie made in the UK from Star Wars to The Bitch) for a top secret mission over occupied territory. Naturally, it goes wrong and he finds himself behind enemy lines in Nazi-occupied territory with a British secret agent (Christopher Plummer) out to prove his courage and show himself worthy of his wife's love by stealing vital documents from the local Gestapo headquarters. Yes, you know exactly what's coming next, but that's part of the fun of this unashamedly romantic throwback to World War Two morale-boosters: the Germans are dastardly, the Brits quietly heroic, the Yanks brash but decent sorts underneath it all, the French resistance irresistible and all the clichés are played straight as if freshly minted.

Ford and Down were last-minute replacements when Kris Kristofferson and Genevieve Bujold dropped out of the picture. At the time, Ford admitted that he only took the role (his first lead) because he had never kissed a woman onscreen, which is as good an excuse as any. In the process he started a career trend of romantic flops and underachievers (Regarding Henry, Random Hearts, Sabrina, Six Days, Seven Nights), but hokey as this is - and it definitely is - this is by far the most entertaining. There's no shortage of cringingly bad dialogue ("Think of me when you drink tea") while an infant Patsy Kensit's deeply annoying turn as Plummer and Down's sugar-sweet oh-so-perfect daughter makes Shirley Temple look like a chainsaw-wielding drug-crazed Christina Ricci and will have you cursing the poor aim of the Luftwaffe. Plummer's unutterably decent cuckolded husband also seems stuck in post-transformation Captain Von Trapp mode - you keep on expecting him to thank Down for bringing music back into his home. Yet much of the humour is intentional, Plummer has a great speech about always being the guy who gives his coat to the drowning man that someone else has rescued and, while it's not exactly hardcore gritty realism, in an age of CGI effects it's refreshing to see a film that literally rebuilds part of WW2 London (even if it does plant a non-existent tube station in Hanover Street) just to blow it all up and in which the bombers are still all real vintage aircraft rather than pixels. Now that it's firmly in the past as an old movie, what was anachronistic in 1979 almost has exactly the kind of charm it failed to weave on cinema audiences all those years ago. And hey, it's a lot more fun than Pearl Harbor.

Although on his audio commentary writer-director Peter Hyams acknowledges the influence of Joseph Heller's novel, Richard Masur's dialogue isn't so much inspired by Catch-22 as lifted from it verbatim. Still, since Mike Nichols didn't use much of it in his poe-faced movie version, and since Masur has such fun with it, you can forgive them the conceit. The film even shares the same cinematographer, David Watkin, though unfortunately it's from that period in late-seventies mainstream cinema when cinematography was both soft and dominated by Earth tones, so the film never looks quite as rich as it could, and this is reflected in the 2.35:1 transfer.

Sadly, Columbia have missed a trick by not including an isolated score track - a particular disappointment because John Barry has famously little regard for his lush and unashamedly romantic score and has always resisted moves to include a suite on any of his own compilations (a 5-minute suite conducted by Nic Raine is included on Silva Screen's The Classic John Barry). No trailer either, though it does include trailers for Random Hearts, The Remains of the Day and Neil Jordan's The End of the Affair.
November 8, 2007

Best of both worlds

This nice little movie combines action and romance in a balance that keeps everyone interested and enjoying the flick. Good story line and climatic ending make this a classic sleeper. July 18, 2007

One of my favorite movies

I saw this a few years ago and have been wanting to see it again--awesome plot!! June 8, 2007

50s Retro Of The 80s Is Cheesy

In case you haven't heard `Hanover Street' 100% directed in a 50s style of Hollywood fantasy, music, acting, editing, and dialogue which by today's standards comes across as cheesy rather than nostalgic.

"Embarrassing" is a better description than horrible. Embarrassing is how to describe the way the film makers should have felt. That professional filmmakers and producers sat down and decided to direct a WWII film in 50s fashion is truly embarrassing.

The Plot: Not that bad or good, `Hanover Street' utilizes the winning WWII genre guaranteed to provide at least some entertainment. American pilot Harrison Ford falls for a married Londoner during a German air raid. (Although no exact year is given, the American involvement in the War and the occupation of France would place it between 1942 and the summer of 1944 and I'm not aware of a German bombing of London during that time.)

The love affair is meaningless. They are not in love and do not even talk enough to exchange names. All their time is spent in the bedroom, but due to the 50s retro and PG rating nothing is happing there either. The only impact it has is on Ford's skills as a B25 bomber over France, no longer the Maverick flier he is unwilling to risk his life. The only interesting thing about these bombing raids is that Ford's copilot is played by Michael Sack star of `Slaughterhouse Five' and `Sugarland Express.' One of his few films.

Danger arrives when Ford is ordered to deliver a deep cover agent, Christopher Plummer to occupied France and their B25 is shot down. Deep behind German lines Plummer must get the German illiterate Ford back to England. As the two soldiers bond Ford realizes Plummer is his lover's husband.

After 90 minutes of low production quality `Hanover Street' does provide a heart pounding well directed action packed escape from France. Unfortunately by then I was too asleep to even remember if Ford survives and I don't care. I recall that Plummer makes it back to England to reunite with his wife and rebuild their marriage.

Herald as one of Ford's few WWII films (The other being the far better `Force 10 From Navarone', `Indiana Jones' does not count since none of them took place during WWII.) `Hanover Street' has thankfully been forgotten with other 80s' 50s retro movies like `1941' and `Streets on Fire'. I don't mind retro films which focus on the time period of a recent decade but the bring back the film techniques of that decade is "embarrassing."
April 23, 2007

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