The Shop Around the Corner ***** (1940, Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut, Felix Bressart, William Tracy) – Classic Movie Review 2512

The 1940 Ernst Lubitsch romcom is a Christmas delight, telling the story of two employees (Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart) at a Budapest leathergoods store in the lead-up to Christmas. 

Director Ernst Lubitsch’s 1940 sparkling romantic comedy movie is ignited by the most graceful of performances from the perfectly paired Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart, reuniting from 1938’s The Shopworn Angel.

They play Klara Novak and Alfred Kralik, a couple of apparently mismatched gift shop employees who can’t stand each other till they realise that they are actually falling in love through the mail as anonymous pen pals. Frank Morgan scores strongly too as Mr Hugo Matuschek, the morose shop owner who thinks that Stewart’s character is having an affair with his wife.

Lubitsch pours all his talent for bitter-sweet romance into this delightful romantic comedy of misunderstandings, set in pre-war Budapest. The material is both timeless and irresistible, at least for romantics. Samson Raphaelson makes a grand job of transferring the 1937 Hungarian play text Parfumerie by  Miklós Laszlo into a screen gem.

Stewart plays Alfred Kralik, the top salesman at the Budapest gift shop owned by the highly strung Hugo Matuschek (Morgan). Kralik’s co-workers include his kindly family man friend Pirovitch (Felix Bressart), two-faced womaniser Ferencz Vadas (Joseph Schildkraut) and ambitious delivery boy Pepi Katona (William Tracy).

Kralik reveals to Pirovitch that he has been corresponding anonymously with an intelligent and cultured woman whose ad he saw in the newspaper. Then Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) enters the gift shop looking for a job.

Also in the cast are Sara Haden as clerk Flora Kaczek, Inez Courtney as saleswoman Ilona Novotny, Charles Halton as Detective, Charles Smith as Rudy, Sarah Edwards, Charles Arnt, William Edmunds, Ruth Warren, William Edmunds, Mary Carr and Gertrude Simpson.

On Christmas Eve, Matuschek and Company achieves record sales, and there is further good news too as the movie comes to its happy ending.

The three stars were so popular that they reunited straight away for The Mortal Storm.

MGM turned into the film in the Judy Garland musical In the Good Old Summertime (1949) and the story also serves as the basis for the Broadway show She Loves Me. It was very successfully revamped and remade as You’ve Got Mail in 1999 with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan.

l

Lubitsch said: ‘It’s not a big picture, just a quiet little story that seemed to have some charm. It didn’t cost very much, for such a cast, under $500,000. It was made in 28 days. I hope it has some charm.’ He drew upon his youthful experiences working in his father’s Berlin clothing shop. He named it ‘the best picture I ever made in my life’.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2512

Check out more reviews on http://derekwinnert.com