The Shop Around the Corner
I’m very happy to introduce guest blogger Daranee, who will be contributing to The Chawed Rosin in future. Let’s give her a warm welcome.
A year ago around Christmas time, I was sitting at home sick when this film came on TV. I had remembered liking it as a youth, but as an adult I appreciated this film in a whole new way.
Based on the Hungarian play Parfumerie, the plot concerns two employees of a little gift shop who are pen pals in love but are unaware that they work with each other. As co-workers they share mutual dislike.
What’s striking about this film is how worldly 1940s America must have been for this film to even have been created. It takes place in Budapest, all the names are Hungarian, Miss Novak wears clothes of a distinct Hungarian aesthetic, and the film has several references to “Ochi Tchornya” – a popular Hungarian tune that I doubt any American would be familiar with. But the film isn’t dumbed down for a hermitic audience. Instead, it asks the viewers to suspend the unknown and go for the ride.
If this film were to be made today (in fact it was remade with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks as You’ve Got Mail) the setting would be changed and all the references would be made to be some American equivalent. Our modern sensibilities do not allow for diversity and unknowns. Note this review by El Bicho:
“For some reason they don’t Americanize the story in the film, which they should. Instead the characters keep the Hungarian names and all the signs are assumedly in Hungarian; this is odd because the actors all sound American except for one actor who puts on an Eastern European accent. It is a little distracting at times, but not enough to ruin your enjoyment of the film.”
Perhaps El Bicho should work for some major Hollywood studio, because his sentiment pretty much echoes some of the asinine decisions made by Hollywood who have little esteem for the audience. Springing to mind is the decision to title The Madness of King George without the suffix “III” lest viewers assume it was a sequel. What these guys have missed is the reason why people go to the movies – the experience of being transported to another time and another place. We go to the films to escape our own lives and experience another.
As for the romance, I challenge anyone to come up with a more romantic line with a more tender delivery than Jimmy Stewart gives here “My dearest, sweetheart Klara, I can’t stand it any longer. Take your key and open the post office box… and take me out of my envelope and kiss me.”
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