Vulture
Please, Mr. Postman: 20 Essential Movies About Letters
By Barry Levitt
April 4, 2024
The joy of letters has been captured in film since the start of the medium, with letters playing an essential role in delivering plot information: Watch any movie from the 1930s or ’40s, and you’ve got a good shot that someone will read a letter revealing vital details. The role of letters has evolved from being a convenient plot device to practically becoming its character; films that don’t just feature letters but are about letters.
Letters aren’t just romantic — though, admittedly, most films use them to enhance love — they can be terrifying, sensationalized, or a last-ditch effort to write a lifelong wrong. Technology has seen things shift, too, with contemporary films replacing letters with emails or instant messaging. We’re probably not far off from a movie where the primary form of communication happens via Instagram DM. Until that fateful day, these are the essential movies about letters.
Only Angels Have Wings (1939)
Howard Hawks made many terrific films across multiple genres, but Only Angels Have Wings may be his finest work. In a South American port town, a group of pilots traverse a treacherous path to deliver mail over the Andes mountains. Geoff Carter (Cary Grant) is the chief pilot of the freight service, and traveling entertainer Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur) falls head over heels for him. While most films here focus on the power of letters, Hawks’s film explores the challenges behind emerging commercial aviation and getting the letters into people’s hands. But it’s the love at the film’s core that endures most: No other film balances swooping romance and pragmatism quite like Only Angels Have Wings.
The Shop Around the Corner (1940)
Alfred (James Stewart) and Klara (Margaret Sullavan) cannot stand each other. That’s putting it pretty mildly; they can barely handle being in the same room, which happens often since they work at the same gift shop. While both are frustrated with their jobs, they take solace in their anonymous pen pals — who happen to be each other. Ernst Lubitsch is a comic master, and Stewart and Sullavan do some of their best work as exasperated retail workers turned unlikely lovers. Screenwriter Samson Raphaelson wrote plenty of Lubitsch’s terrific comedies (including The Smiling Lieutenant and Trouble in Paradise). Still, it’s The Shop Around the Corner that’s remained a genre-defining rom-com.
Le Corbeau (1943)
Henri-Georges Clouzot was viewed by many as France’s answer to Hitchcock, and it’s easy to see why in his second feature: the sly, seductive thriller Le Corbeau. A small French town is damned by the unseen; an anonymous letter writer known as Le Corbeau (‘The Raven’) pens a nasty campaign against doctor Rémy Germain (a tremendous Pierre Fresnay). But Le Corbeau doesn’t stop there, targeting the whole town with malicious rumors that turn every man for himself. Clouzot’s gothic-tinted film is one of the nastiest (and most exciting) portrayals of letters in cinema, replacing the romance of letter writing with insidious ink.
Letter From an Unknown Woman (1948)
“By the time you read this letter, I may be dead,” begins the letter that will forever change Stefan’s (Louis Jourdan) life. It’s written by Lisa (Joan Fontaine), a woman who spent her life in love with Stefan, who barely registered her existence. As Stefan reads the letter, he learns all about Lisa’s life and how their lives unexpectedly intertwine. Max Ophüls’s film is a heartbreaking story of unrequited love: While Letter From an Unknown Woman didn’t impact the 1940s, it’s now rightly viewed as a masterpiece, a gorgeously composed romance with heartrending dialogue and perfect performances.
A Letter to Three Wives (1949)
While on a trip, three friends receive a letter: The person who has written it has run off with one of their husbands. Joseph L. Mankiewicz (who one year later would make All About Eve) won two Oscars for this exceptional film, in which three friends think back and relive their past via flashback to figure out if it’s their husband who has left them. Remarkably, the women don’t turn on one another, instead supporting each other as they try to get to the bottom of an unfortunate truth. Mankiewicz makes the most of a dynamite concept, weaving comedy and melodrama with outstanding performances (Linda Darnell’s star power is undeniable here) to create an unforgettable delight.
Cause for Alarm! (1951)
This intimate kitchen noir finds George (Barry Sullivan) stewing away in bed. Incredibly ill, he concocts an idea that his wife, Ellen (Loretta Young), and doctor (Bruce Cowling) are conspiring to kill him. So, he does what any bedridden man in the 1950s would do: He writes a detailed, evidence-filled letter to his district attorney. When Ellen discovers she’s sent the letter off with the postman, she embarks on a desperate mission to get it back before the DA opens it. Cause for Alarm! earns the exclamation point in its title, delivering a deft, twisty thriller mainly in the confines of a single home.
Love Letter (1953)
Actress Kinuyo Tanaka made her directorial debut with Love Letter, a film that grapples with the aftermath of World War II in Japan. Reikichi’s (Masayuki Mori) job is to write love letters for other people, particularly for Japanese women who want to communicate with American soldiers in English. Despite being great at his job, Rekichi is hardly the man you’d expect behind the letters; he’s a profoundly miserable and self-destructive man. But as Tanaka’s melodramatic and elegiac film shows us, beauty often comes from the most unexpected places.
News From Home (1977)
Chantal Akerman’s avant-garde News From Home is deliberately exhausting. It unfolds entirely via long takes of New York City locations, including lengthy stretches of a subway door opening and closing. The film’s only dialogue comes from reading letters that Chantal’s mother sent her from Belgium while the filmmaker lived in New York. This film forces you to live in its space, feeling the anguish of time passing and an increasing rift between mother and daughter. Each read letter feels like a respite from the suffocating stretches of silence, but as the letters become less frequent, News From Home reminds us that the impact of a letter can only fill the void of loneliness so far.
84 Charing Cross Road (1987)
Letters can connect the unlikeliest of people and breach the widest of gaps; in the case of 84 Charing Cross Road, New York writer Helene Hanff (Anne Bancroft) and London bookseller Frank Doel (Anthony Hopkins) strike up a powerful friendship on either side of the Atlantic Ocean. Frank’s initial responses are tremendously formal, but one of the many pleasures in David Jones’s film is seeing Frank become more and more invested in the process. This lovely, sentimental, and surprising film envelops you in its warmth and never lets go.
Beaches (1988)
This lovely weepie follows the lifelong friendship between C.C. Bloom (Bette Midler) and Hillary Whitney (Barbara Hershey). When the pair live on opposite coasts, their relationship is sustained by letters, which breach the multi-thousand-mile gap that separates them. The film explores the bond between two very different people brought together by unlikely circumstances and the lengths people will go for one another in their times of need. Beaches is a stranger film than you might remember, with some wacky musical numbers and an edgy sense of humor. Bonus points for casting: Mayim Bialik plays young C.C., bearing an astonishing resemblance to Midler.
La Cérémonie (1995)
French master Claude Chabrol’s La Cérémonie inspired Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite. It’s pretty easy to see why: Chabrol’s film is about Sophie (Sandrine Bonnaire), a maid hired by a wealthy family. After moving into their massive home, she becomes friends with postmaster Jeanne (Isabelle Huppert), Sophie’s complete opposite. Jeanne has a long-standing dislike of the family Sophie works for, and she gradually turns Sophie against them. Chabrol’s film is a penetrating look at class, exploring the nuances of how mistreatment and belittlement build subtly, leading to truly shocking ends.
Shakespeare in Love (1998)
There’s a letter at the center of the surprise Best Picture winner, Shakespeare in Love. Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes), struggling with writer’s block, is blown away by the audition of one Thomas Kent (Gwyneth Paltrow) for his latest play. To entice Thomas (Viola de Lesseps in disguise) to join the play, Shakespeare writes an impassioned letter to convince him to take the role. Shakespeare and Viola end up falling for each other, and the fiery sonnets he writes her fuel his creative inspiration. This sweet romance is about the power of the written word; in a film showcasing the strength of words delivered onstage, a letter sets everything in motion.
You’ve Got Mail (1998)
In a contemporary update of The Shop Around the Corner, co-workers become unwitting business rivals in Nora Ephron’s You’ve Got Mail. Opening with the Cranberries “Dreams,” the film unleashes a charm offensive that never lets go — and why would you want it to? Meg Ryan is Kathleen Kelly, owner of an independent bookshop (named The Shop Around the Corner). Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) is running the opening of a significant new chain bookstore that’s looking to put Kathleen’s shop out of business; all the while, the two are falling for each other via email, where they know each other as “Shopgirl” and “NY 152.” Trying to run a rival out of business may not sound incredibly heartwarming, but Ephron’s film turns autumn in NYC into the world’s most dazzling destination.
A Cinderella Story (2004)
A teen movie that proved a defining benchmark for many kids born in the ’90s, A Cinderella Story refreshes the classic fairy tale in the San Fernando Valley, where Sam (Hilary Duff) works tirelessly for her evil stepmother (a delightful Jennifer Coolidge). She exchanges emails with a mysterious high-schooler named “Nomad,” actually Austin (Chad Michael Murray), the most popular guy at school. The film is glorious wish fulfillment, the kind of movie best served with a tub of your favorite ice cream. A Cinderella Story proves the written word is just as impactful when it’s typed: “They’re not love notes, they’re emails,” Sam tries to justify. But she’s wrong, and she knows it.
The Lake House (2006)
Many films argue that there’s magic in a handwritten letter, but The Lake House takes that idea literally. Kate (Sandra Bullock) and Alex (Keanu Reeves) begin communicating with one another via a lake-house mailbox, but there’s a twist: Kate is in 2006, and Alex is in 2004. The Lake House suggests that letters are timeless, and their considerable barrier is lifted thanks to the irresistible power of the written word. This rather ridiculous love story is made believable thanks to the charm of its leads and some admittedly flimsy plot machinations. It’s cheesy, sure, but a platter of fine dairies is precisely what a film about a time-traveling mailbox calls for.
Letters From Iwo Jima (2006)
Soldiers have to adopt a certain stoicism to survive the brutal realities of war, to shield themselves from the relentless horror all around them. Their private letters to their loved ones offer up the vulnerability they’re forced to keep at bay. Clint Eastwood’s Letters From Iwo Jima explores some of the letters found decades later, written by men who knew they could not make it off the island alive. It’s fascinating to see an American WWII movie give us the Japanese perspective with such respect; the film was perhaps unsurprisingly most successful in Japan, where it topped the box office for over a month.
Zodiac (2007)
The Zodiac killer sends a letter to three different San Francisco newspapers containing details of his most recent murder, a cipher that promises to reveal his identity, and a threat that many more killings are on the way. Zodiac strips any romance from letters, reading them as their most primal words of intent — and here, the purpose is entirely malicious. Fincher’s procedural thriller is extraordinary in its meticulousness, delivering an obsession for detail that is not unlike that of protagonist Robert Graysmith (Jake Gyllenhaal). The director makes people poring through old files inordinately exciting, and it’s nearly impossible not to get swept up in its chilling atmosphere.
Letters to Juliet (2010)
There’s something about Amanda Seyfried that makes her a perfect fit for movies about letters: In 2010, she also starred in Dear John. But Letters to Juliet is the better film about a fact-checker starting her writing career. While on a trip to fair Verona with her poorly matched fiancé, Sophie (Seyfried) discovers a group of women called the Secretaries of Juliet, who have devoted themselves to answering letters written by women seeking advice in love. Sophie joins them and uncovers an unanswered letter from the 1950s. This leads Sophie on a journey to help Claire (Vanessa Redgrave) on a quest to find her lost love. There’s a deep, satisfying nostalgia in Letters to Juliet. This love story reminds us it’s never too late for love — a message that feels far more poignant when paired with sumptuous images of the Italian countryside.
The Last Letter From Your Lover (2021)
A routine story for journalist Ellie (Felicity Jones) becomes something else entirely when she uncovers a wrongly filed letter that sends her on a journey to discover who the people in this mysterious missive are. This film pines for the days of letter writing; the letters between Jennifer (Shailene Woodley) and Anthony (Callum Turner) are passionate and driven by immense, almost unspeakable desire, while emails are cold and calculated. In Augustine Frizzell’s film, letters aren’t just a way to relive old memories and forge new ones.
Wicked Little Letters (2024)
Love letters be damned — in Wicked Little Letters, a mysterious assailant is sending nasty, hateful letters to Edith Swan (Olivia Colman). But she’s not the only one: Vulgar letters start arriving at just about everyone’s door, setting the English town of Littlehampton with gossip. The chemistry between Colman and prime suspect Jessie Buckley is crackling, and watching them fling vicious, profanity-laden insults at each other is a total thrill. British cinema, particularly its period dramas, has a reputation for being prim and proper, but Wicked Little Letters tears down that idea with relentless glee.
