Movies from the Heart—The Shop Around the Corner

Moving from last week’s political story to this week’s old world-ish kind of story is like going from a contemporary story to one set long ago—and yet last week’s State of the Union was filmed in 1948 and this week’s The Shop Around the Corner was filmed in 1940—so they’re both from the same decade. Written by Samson Raphaelson and Miklós László, The Shop Around the Corner captures the old world of Budapest, Hungary… though, of course, it was filmed in Hollywood.

Let’s take a look at two trailers for this one. The first, made decades after the film’s release, is a quick little glimpse of this Christmas film as an inducement to buy it on DVD:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YVaJzw7u3I

Sweet, charming, fast-moving, bubbly—go out and buy that DVD for someone this Christmas! That’s what the trailer said.

But a completely different kind of trailer, made at the time the film was released, was an inducement to go see the film. It’s a bit different than modern trailers we know, so interesting to study as it has a character in the film introduce the cast… kinda strange and not at all fast-moving. Trailers like this are found only in the early days of cinema:

https://www.imdb.com/video/vi3880622361/? playlistId=tt0033045&ref_=tt_pr_ov_vi

If you’ve seen the modern-day version of this film, You’ve Got Mail, when two people meet in a chat room and begin emailing each other, you can see how much the two versions have in common. Things turn romantic and our two protagonists talk about meeting, eventually discovering that they know—and can’t stand—each other. Writer/director Nora Ephron acknowledged her debt to the original, even naming the bookshop in the film ‘The Shop Around the Corner’ to harken back to the old days when you went to a shop that sold everything and you didn’t really call it by its name, it was just that shop around the corner.

In the original film, Klara comes into the shop wanting a job and the head clerk, Alfred, tells her there’s nothing available. But she manages to wangle herself a job anyway. On her first day she clashes with Alfred, and that clash will continue for the rest of the film. Eventually she talks about her young man—who in reality is a pen-pal, someone she’s been corresponding with for a while. Alfred has also been corresponding with pen pal and, of course, he finds out that pen pal is Klara.

It's a story about who we are on the surface and who we really are inside. And it’s telling us that if we let the inside person out, we’ll be happier.

Good advice for life in many ways.

So have a lovely Christmas Eve and take a look at this little gem this holiday season with someone you love.

Next week, it’s New Year’s Eve, so let’s go to a party—with All About Eve.

Copyright © Diane Lake

24Dec23

Email Diane a question to Diane@DianeLake.com