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The Shop Around the Corner


#456 - The Shop Around the Corner
Ernst Lubitsch, 1940



A pair of employees in a Budapest store share an extremely belligerent co-existence in person without realising that they are in a romantic pen-pal relationship with one another.

It's a credit to any film where you can know just about everything there is to know about a film before going in and it still manages to win you over just fine. The Shop Around the Corner uses a very tried-and-true formula for its story - that of the people who hate each other in reality but who have unwittingly forged a secret relationship through another medium. Here, it is between two colleagues at a leathergoods shop in Budapest, one a stubborn veteran (James Stewart) and the other a newly-employed go-getter (Margaret Sullavan) who instantly step on each other's toes in their attempts to appease their boss (Frank Morgan). The film's main variation on this familiar formula ends up being something of a heavily foreshadowed twist when it is revealed that Stewart and Sullavan are pen-pals who got into contact through an anonymous classified ad. Their passionate and intelligent correspondence naturally makes for an ironic counterpoint to their passive-aggressive work environment.

Even as the film's A-story follows a somewhat easy to predict progression, it is buoyed by a good cast of characters and some capable performers. An interesting thing I've noticed about old Hollywood films that are set in foreign countries and feature characters native to the region is in how most of the cast members don't even bother attempting any remotely European accents (while some of them coincidentally do have such accents), though it's a forgiveable trait that I figure makes things more convenient for actors and audiences alike. Imagine James Stewart trying to sound Hungarian - yeah. He still makes for a sufficiently earnest and likeable protagonist anyway, while Sullavan makes for a good counterpart as they both avoid completely descending into acid-tongued antipathy and thus don't come across as boring. The supporting characters don't all ring true (the shop's wise-cracking errand boy is more than a little irksome), but they flesh out the film and its setting impressively enough so that when the film ends up dedicating time to a sub-plot involving the shop's boss suspecting his wife of infidelity, it doesn't feel like a weak attempt at padding. Throw in some clever little jokes (often involving the cigarette case that doubles as a music-box), surprising yet believable plot developments, and a general sense of warmth to the shop and those who work in it and you actually have a reasonably well-developed old-school romance film that is definitely worth a watch.