The Shop Around the Corner

The Shop Around the Corner

I had high hopes for this movie, but I don't get it. Probably the worst movie I've seen starring Jimmy Stewart. He was okay, but his performance seemed stilted and restrained. Margaret Sullavan's performance was fine but her character was shallow and reprehensible. Setting the story in Budapest was just confusing and added nothing to the story. The adultery subplot likewise was irrelevant to the story. Just a jumbled, unfocused film.

Back in the day of the big studio system, the darndest casting decisions were made. Good old all American James Stewart appearing as a Hungarian in The Shop Around the Corner. Had I been casting the film, the part of Kralik would have been perfect for Charles Boyer. His accent mixed in with all the other European accents would have been nothing. Stewart had some of the same problem in the Mortal Storm also with Margaret Sullavan. Margaret Sullavan was his most frequent leading lady on the screen, he did four films with her. But is only this one where neither of them dies. Sullavan and her husband Leland Heyward knew Stewart back in the day when he was a struggling player in New York. In fact Sullavan's husband was Stewart's good friend Henry Fonda back then. I think only Clark Gable was able to carry off being an American in a cast of non-Americans in Mutiny on the Bounty. Stewart in The Mortal Storm was German, but all the other players were American as well so nothing stood out. But if you can accept Stewart, than you'll be seeing a fine film from Ernest Lubitsch. The plot is pretty simple, a man and woman working in a department store in Budapest don't get along in person. But it seems that they are carrying on a correspondence with some anonymous admirers which turn out to be each other. Also employer Frank Morgan suspects Stewart wrongly of kanoodling with his wife. Though the leads are fine and Frank Morgan departs from his usual befuddled self, the two players who come off best are Felix Bressart and Joseph Schildkraut. Bressart has my favorite moments in the film when he takes off after Morgan starts asking people for opinions. He makes himself very scarce. And Joseph Schildkraut, who is always good, is just great as the officious little worm who is constantly kissing up to Frank Morgan. You really hate people like that, I've known too many like Schildkraut in real life who are at office politics 24 hours a day. Sad that it pays off a good deal of the time.

In Budapest, Hungary, the Matuschek and Company store is owned by Mr. Hugo Matuschek (Frank Morgan) and the bachelor Alfred Kralik (James Stewart) is his best and most experienced salesman. When Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) seeks a job position of saleswoman in the store, Matuschek hires her but Kralik and she do not tolerate each other. Meanwhile the lonely and dedicated Kralik has an unknown pen pal that he intends to propose very soon; however, he is fired without explanation by Matuschek in the night that he is going to meet his secret love. He goes to the bar where they have scheduled their meeting with his colleague Pirovitch (Felix Bressart) and he surprisingly finds that Klara is his correspondent; however, ashamed with the unemployment, he does not disclose his identity to her. When Matuschek discovers that he had misjudged Kralik and committed a mistake, he hires him again for the position of manager. But Klara is still fascinated with her future fiancé and does not pay much attention to Kralik. "The Shop around the Corner" is a delightfully naive romance, and this is the type of film that deserves to be watched many times. It is charming and innocent, and James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan show a wonderful chemistry even in their arguments. I love this period of classic romantic comedies when society was satisfied with a screenplay that does not need to use sex scenes and other diversion but great dialogs supported by outstanding direction and acting. In 1998, Nora Ephron updated this film with the remake "You've Got Mail" without any reference to the work of Ernest Lubitsch. My vote is eight. Title (Brazil): "A Loja da Esquina" ("The Shop around the Corner")

After being recommended this film and seeing it pop up on enough "best of holiday flicks" lists, I decided to finally give it a watch. Unfortunately, despite a solid cast and a interesting kernel of an idea, I found "The Shop Around The Corner" to be perplexingly disinterested in its main conceit, to the detriment of the overall experience. For a very basic overview, this film focuses on a group of individuals working at a sort of knick-knack shop owned by Mr. Matuschek (Frank Morgan). More specifically, employee Alfred Kralick (Jimmy Stewart) becoming continually exasperated--personally and professionally--with new hire Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan). Unbeknownst (at least for a time) to both parties, however, they are also each other's romantic/mysterious pen pals, corresponding through letters as they bicker in person. There's no doubt that "Shop Around The Corner" is based upon an interesting idea: two people who seemingly hate each other in real life are over-the-moon for each other strictly based on written correspondence. The problem here, though, is that this central conceit is bafflingly given very little rope to play out. Viewers are never given a scene of, say, Kralick writing one of his letters, and when we finally do see Ms. Novak read one, it is played more for comedy than anything. I just never felt much romantic chemistry between the two for that reason. Instead, we get numerous subplots involving the store, such as the owner's attempted suicide, his wife's infidelity (with a store employee), and the upward trajectory of a young "errand boy". All of those angles--and more--are generally fun and contain their own little revelations or witticisms. Yet, taken as a whole, they also largely overshadow the Kralick/Novak dynamic that needs to be so central for a movie like this to really work. Perhaps this is a film better enjoyed in its cultural time period. Perhaps I just "didn't get it", so to speak. Either way, while I was certainly never bored or outrightly disappointed with any of the on-screen happenings, none of it really made much of an emotional impact on me, either.

This is a quaint romantic comedy set in turn-of-the-century Budapest where coworkers(James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan) at a novelty shop don't realize they are writing love letters to each other. This story line serves as a template for YOU'VE GOT MAIL(1998). Shot in beautiful black and white and leaves you with that 'fuzzy' feeling. A good old time movie. The supporting cast includes:Frank Morgan, William Tracy, Sara Haden and Joseph Schildkraut.

It's hard to even know where to begin to praise "The Shop Around the Corner." I'll avoid repeating what other IMDb critics have said by offering this: A good friend of mine is an older man-- in his 70s-- who scorned films, preferring opera (and not just opera, but Wagner), literature (Tolstoy at least), and philosophy (Wittgenstein, of course). He offered me one chance to show him a movie that proved cinema's worth as an art form. I chose "The Shop Around the Corner." It's neither highbrow nor lowbrow, it's neither epic nor a silly bit of froth, it's not a genre or a formula picture, and it's about nothing bigger than decency and love (which are plenty big enough). It is, however, flawless, both funny and touching, and I thought it was a fair representation of how superb even modest films can be, and therefore a fair test of how open-minded my friend was. "Powerfully flavored," was his summation, and he was impressed enough to begin seeing movies again (the last one he'd seen on a big screen was "Lawrence of Arabia"). And so, among all its other qualities, "The Shop Around the Corner" is one of the best ambassadors the art form could ask for.

Sullavan is awful in this role.... Although rest of cast is good--this still doesn't make the film enjoyable. I couldn't wait for it to end. Just skip this one!!

This movie is composed of a bad start and a weak ending, which frame about 35 minutes of actual enjoyment. The first hour is a catalog of hostile and desperate workplace unpleasantness, and that's letting it off very easy. After that comes a revelation (not who the pen pals are) that makes certain awful people slightly more human and causes some trailing effects (Pepe making salesperson) that are funny and interesting. Then it ends with Stewart executing a fairly cruel subterfuge and Sullivan having to hastily accept him because the movie is rapidly running out of time; structurally, it's off the rails. If all you care about is that an improbable happy ending arrives in the final three seconds of a movie, this might satisfy you. I was not amused by the cheap, crappy resolution of the movie's entire premise. It's a cop-out. The bizarre choice to leave the movie's setting in Hungary, with no impact whatsoever on any other aspect of the movie is a head scratcher. The movie is pure and straight 1930s Hollywood. This material was also unappealing when it was remade as the musical 'In the Good Old Summertime' with Judy Garland and Van Johnson.

With a very good cast, a nice blend of wit and sentiment, and many other pluses, this classic remains as enjoyable and charming as ever. The fluffy but pleasant story benefits greatly from the Lubitsch touch, since he had the knack of giving significance to little things without taking them or himself too seriously. Presenting his characters honestly yet sympathetically, he makes the somewhat contrived situation seem believable and worth caring about. Its appeal comes across as almost effortless, but you only have to compare it with the less effective 90's remake to see how important the right touch is with this kind of story. The atmosphere of life in the Budapest shop is set up efficiently and convincingly, and the cast all settle into their roles seamlessly. As the leads, Jimmy Stewart works perfectly, of course, and Margaret Sullavan conveys the right balance of spunkiness and vulnerability. Felix Bressart is invaluable, giving perhaps the finest performance among his many character roles. In some of his scenes, he barely has to say a word to make you smile. Frank Morgan is surprisingly good in a role rather different than usual for him, Joseph Schildkraut is effectively oily as the deceitful Vadas, and the others all help out, too. Lubitsch gives all of the characters a chance to come to life without pretense, just by using simple details effectively. It all fits together very well, moves at just the right pace, and makes you a part of the characters' world. It makes for a very enjoyable movie that holds up very well even after several viewings.