Adapted from a Hungarian play, The Shop Around the Corner is set in a fine leather goods shop in Budpaest during the Great Depression. Director Ernst Lubitsch, famed for his delicate touch with wry humor and romance, creates a charming tale of two young shop employees, winningly played by James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan.
The plot
Head clerk Alfred Kralik (Stewart) is corresponding with a young woman he’s never met, a high-minded exchange of “cultural” ideas that quickly turns to thoughts of love. Meanwhile, Klara Novak (Sullavan) comes into the shop looking for a job. She convinces the boss, Mr. Matuschek, but can’t seem to get along with Alfred from the very start.Klara is corresponding with a young man herself. It doesn’t take a Mensa candidate to figure out that it’s Alfred, but the two bickering sales clerks would never believe their refined, romantic pen pals would behave so rudely. They’re oblivious.
Meanwhile, Mr. Matuschek suspects that his wife is carrying on with another man, possibly one of his own employees, and hires a private investigator. His suspicion falls on Alfred, whom he loves like a son, and things go downhill rapidly from there.
In the little world that Lubitsch has created, the upstanding Alfred is the one who must set things right, discover the identity of his letter-writing lady, help the boss through his crisis, and bring everything together somehow for a merry Christmas in the shop around the corner.
The players
Stewart is his amiable self as Alfred, very young, tall and gangly. He’s the boy your mother wished you’d bring home, a perfect gentleman, but not without a spark of humor and spirit. Sullavan is sweetly neurotic as Klara, who pursues the sales job rather desperately, and so thoroughly idealizes her letter-writing gentleman that she can’t see him directly under her nose.Frank Morgan, best known as the wizard in The Wizard of Oz, does a nice job as the shop owner, backed by an engaging cast of clerks and delivery boys. Felix Bressart is a standout as Alfred’s fellow clerk and gentle friend, and Joseph Schildkraut is nicely smarmy as an untrustworthy colleague.
The backstory
The Hungarian play’s plot of two people who “meet cute," (in romantic comedy parlance) is one of those enduring stories that has been remade again and again. The Broadway musical “She Loves Me” was a great success, as well as the 1949 movie In the Good Old Summertime and 1998’s You’ve Got Mail which updated the post-office romance to an email correspondence.For some reason, the shops keep changing – in both the Hungarian and U.S. stage versions, it’s a perfume shop; in the 1940 movie, it’s a leather goods store; in the 1949 movie, it’s a music shop; and in the 1998 movie with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, the lovers work at competing bookstores. (Ryan’s independent store is named “The Shop Around the Corner" in homage.)
The director
Ernst Lubitsch was born in Berlin, and quit the German equivalent of high school to pursue his interest in acting (probably not what his high school drama teacher had in mind). He had early success with silent films in Germany, came to America and achieved even greater success with silent movies here.His ability to tell a compelling story with pictures was maintained in his “talkies,” where his gentle wit and deft observation of character emerged more fully. In addition to The Shop Around the Corner, his most beloved films are the sharply political and somewhat racy Ninotchka with Greta Garbo, and the lyrical To Be or Not to Be, about a troupe of Polish actors resisting the Nazis.
The bottom line
The Shop Around the Corner has been named to the National Film Registry as a picture of historic significance. It feels a bit stagy, but the warm performances and romantic byplay make it great fun.Just the Facts:
Year: 1940, Black and White
Director: Ernst Lubitsch
Running Time: 99 minutes
Studio: MGM
