Take 58: The Shop Around the Corner

In July, 2015, the BBC released a list of the 100 Greatest American Films, curated by polling critics all over the world. I’m watching them and writing about them as a form of self taught film school. This week… in honor of sweet Valentine’s Day, we’re doing one of the few romantic comedies, Take 58: The Shop Around the Corner. As always, there will be spoilers.

Nora Ephron was, I am almost certain, the first female writer / director I knew by name. She was, and remains, the queen of the romantic comedy. I’ve credited Ephron’s last movie before her death in 2012, Julie and Julia, with partial inspiration for this very blog. The first movie of Ephron’s I ever loved was When Harry Met Sally, but You’ve Got Mail comes in a not-so-close second place when it comes to total number of lazy, Sunday afternoon viewings. I haven’t seen You’ve Got Mail in years, but without consulting any external resources, I can tell you Tom Hanks’ dog’s name was Brinkley, Joni Mitchell’s River is quoted when Meg Ryan’s Kathleen Kelly sadly remembers her deceased mother while decorating the shop windows for Christmas, and in the Storybook Princess scene, Kelly reads a passage from Roald Dahl’s Boy about sticking a dead rat in a candy jar. In fact, I’m just coming to realize, the area of my life I have the most brazen confidence in is the depth of my You’ve Got Mail trivia knowledge.

In case you’re wondering, You’ve Got Mail is not on the BBC’s list of the top 100 American Films. But, rolling in at a respectable #58 is The Shop Around the Corner, and if you are a YGM fan like myself, you will immediately recognize the name of Kelly’s quirky little book shop in the title of the 1940 classic. This did cross my mind when I bought the ticket to the screening at the Brattle Theater, but I chalked it up to coincidence, or at most, an homage. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that You’ve Got Mail is, in essence, a contemporary remake of the The Shop Around the Corner. I watched in delightful surprise as my favorite New York City scenes from the modern Ephon classic were reenacted nearly line by line in Budapest by Jimmy Stewart’s Alfred Kralik and Margaret Sullivan’s Klara Novak:

Instead of quarreling business owners, our leads are competing salespeople at a small store operated by the fatherly proprietor, Hugo Matuschek. Klara is the newcomer to the store, and Alfred’s inherent distrust of her and her sales acumen lays the groundwork for their contentious relationship that will eventually blossom into romance. While there were certainly stretches of scenes throughout the film I spent mentally populating the TSATC vs.YGM venn diagram, I was also pleasantly surprised to feel a stirring of nostalgia for The Office (I’ve only seen the American version. Shame, shame, I know.) which perfected the workplace situation comedy. There’s a strong ensemble of memorable supporting characters who make up the rest of the staff at Matuschek and Co..

While Alfred and Klara’s chemistry is entrancing, the wheels of the narrative arc are greased by a strong sub plot driven by Matuschek and the minor characters skirting the edges of most scenes. They are stock and flat in some cases (the sinister dandy, the fast talking urban errand boy, etc.) yet their dynamics to one another are familial, and ripe with authenticity.

I enjoyed The Shop Around the Corner and I think I’ve made my love for You’ve Got Mail abundantly clear. That being said, I’m still surprised the film came in around the mid range point on the list of 100 greatest American films, edging out heavyweights like The Shining (#62) and Schindler’s List (#78). Admittedly, that may be because I have been trained to see the category I love as lesser, or light, next to more dramatic cinematic classics. The “RomCom” descriptor is too often used to degrade the genre, and reduce its elements to airy, insignificant tropes. I think much of that derision is because the movies are usually equated with female interests, and are in turn, dismissed as being a “woman thing” as quickly as beach reads and shoe sales. Especially over the course of the last decade, quality romantic comedies seem harder to find as producers and studios shift their focus to epic, post apocalyptic, disaster, explode-a-thons.

I will table the remainder of my feminist rant on this topic (for now) and say simply it’s the human relationships that give romantic comedies credence — not the relationship between the inevitably star crossed lovers, but the relationships between those lovers and everyone else in their lives; with their coworkers and their friends and their families. Last year alone, I saw the world saved no fewer than ten times on the screen, and I never once felt as emotionally wrecked as I do when I see one flush of embarrassment wash over the face of someone striving to impress a paramour. While the tide of taste shifts towards stories with higher stakes, I feel we’ve lost some of the potency that can only come from smaller, more focused, portraits of characters that are relatable to anyone who has a felt the rush of expectation and the sting of disappointment.

While I could wax poetic about Jimmy Stewart, and he was as stellar as one would expect from Hollywood’s stalwart, I know I’ll have many more opportunities to sing his praises throughout this series. Instead, I want to spend some time exalting Margaret Sullivan.

Part of my early resistance to old movies, is that the woman characters are too often used as props in the male hero’s journey, reduced to femme fatales with no motivation, or just a set of legs and hips. Margaret Sullivan is anything but a prop.

This is the only film of hers I have ever seen, but she was hypnotizing and I was rooting for her from the very beginning. We watch her enter the store and work over Matuschek despite Alfred’s protestations and claims to know him better than he knows himself. My favorite scene was when Matuschek required his employees to stay late the night of Klara and Aflred’s fateful date in order to decorate the shop windows for Christmas. At this point in the film, Alfred is Klara’s superior, and realizing he can permit her to leave for the evening, she shifts her attitude from one of contempt to one of playful flirtation. She compliments him and smiles widely. Alfred picks up on what’s happening, but Klara is masterful just the same, and we’re given another glimpse into her salesmanship prowess.

Therein lies the true power of the romantic comedy. They mirror our own relationships with those closest to us, we get handfuls of what we love about the leads and a slow reveal of their deeper characteristics. I liked this movie a lot, but as much as I enjoyed it for what it was, I’m happy to see that kudos were given by the critics to films that otherwise may have been dismissed as insignificant. If you’re looking for a Valentine’s day movie to snuggle up and watch, you can do a lot worse that The Shop Around the Corner.

(p.s. I’ve been trying to figure out what the meaning of that last scene is, but I honestly have no idea and would love to hear your guesses / insight. It was truly one of the more baffling things I have seen in a movie in recent memory.