Ernst Lubitsch (1940)
The cast is almost entirely comprised of the staff of Mr Matuschek’s store in Budapest and they perform rather like a repertory company. Things happen in the story to bring out different facets of their personalities; relationships develop and change – especially in the central romance between Alfred Kralik and Klara Novak; but the characters are very securely defined and the actors go through some repeated routines. Yet Lubitsch’s orchestration of these turns brings out an emotional richness. The Shop Around the Corner takes place in December: there are lights and miniature Christmas trees and falling snow; it’s a romantic comedy with a happy Christmas Eve ending. The film may have become a seasonal classic for these unsurprising reasons; it deserves this status for more distinctive features. There’s a buoyant good nature to the proceedings but one of the film’s odd charms is in how it romanticises the commercial aspect of Christmas – the celebratory tone of the sequence that precedes the concluding romantic resolution is more a matter of cash tills than sleigh bells ringing. Instead of carols, the dominant music is the famous Eastern European melody ‘Ochi Tchorniya’, which is made fun of – it’s the tune played by the consignment of musical cigar boxes which Matuschek has bought up, and which catalyse the disagreements involving him and his smart right-hand man Kralik and Klara, the new girl on the staff.
It’s Frank Morgan (who’d played the Wizard of Oz the previous year) who, as Matuschek, embodies the quality of touching commerciality – Matuschek’s shop is his life and he becomes all the more aware of that when he finds out that his flirtatious wife (who never appears but is a persistent influence on the story) has been unfaithful. Morgan and Joseph Schildkraut – as Ferencz Vadas, who’s eventually unmasked as the co-respondent – are the standouts in the supporting roles: Schildkraut, best known for his Oscar-winning portrait of Alfred Dreyfus in The Life of Emile Zola (1937) and as Otto Frank in The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), has terrific comic zest as the dandified Vadas. Felix Bressart is the droll family man Pirovitch, William Tracy the inventively sparky errand boy Pepi, and Charles Smith his eventual replacement in that job (when Pepi becomes a clerk and quickly gets ideas above his station). James Stewart is superb in the leading man role: as Kralik, his precision timing and emotional transparency are transmitted so naturally that he’s a joy to watch. At this stage of his career, Stewart was a great romantic comedian. (The Philadelphia Story was released within twelve months of The Shop Around the Corner.)
Except for Klara, the women’s roles, played by Sara Haden (as Flora) and Inez Courtney (as Ilona), are less theatrically showy than the men’s but, for me, the only thing that doesn’t work in The Shop Around the Corner – it’s a big thing, though – is Margaret Sullavan’s Klara. Sullavan is highly accomplished but the charm beneath Klara’s snippy, sniffy antipathy towards Kralik eluded me. The cultural and social one-upmanship calls to mind the way Stephanie treats Tony in Saturday Night Fever – yet I can always see what Tony sees in her, partly because the verbal sparring is interspersed with dance sequences, partly because Stephanie’s putdowns are so clueless. Klara knows how to deliver a hurtful remark; more than once, Alfred feels the pain of the barb then compliments Klara on her devastating delivery. It’s a relief that Sullavan is eventually likeable – when Klara admits that she was attracted to Alfred from the start but then decided to keep a distance and he reveals that he’s the pen-pal she’s so taken with. Even so, there’s a connection between James Stewart’s submerged ardency and the way Alfred writes letters to Klara that I didn’t find satisfyingly reciprocated in Margaret Sullavan.
The screenplay, by Samson Raphaelson, is adapted from a 1937 Hungarian stage play by Miklós László called Parfumerie. According to Wikipedia, The Shop Around the Corner spawned a variety of remakes and variations on its theme. When you read that these included Are You Being Served?, you do wonder about Wikipedia.
29 December 2010
