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The Christmas movie that Jimmy Stewart will forever be associated with is It’s a Wonderful Life. There’s no denying that, it’s one of the most beloved movies of all time, and Stewart is a key factor in that -it’s one of his very best performances (which is saying a lot given his career). But what’s funny about that is that Christmas itself doesn’t factor into the movie very much. It’s not until the third act that the holiday becomes the primary setting and the only bearing that Christmas has on the plot then is in its functional similarity to another classic Christmas story about a man whose life is put into perspective as he undergoes a moral and emotional transformation on Christmas Eve. It’s more the movies’ themes that designate it a Christmas movie than any overarching presence of the holiday.
Six years earlier though, Stewart had made a movie set at Christmas for a much longer portion of its run-time, in which Christmas is a backdrop for an unconventional romance. The Shop Around the Corner, a film by the inimitable Ernst Lubitsch, might be one of the first Christmas romantic comedies -and maybe one of the only genuinely great ones. I think it might be the last of the essential holiday classics I haven’t seen (certainly from the 1940s), but it’s long been on my radar as one of the most acclaimed Golden Age Hollywood romances as well. It’s based on a Hungarian play, and is set at a leathergoods shop in Budapest where two co-workers who don’t get along are unaware that they’re each others’ secret admirer, communicating anonymously through letters and attracted to the perceived intellect, poetry, and cultured sensibilities of the other. This Benedick and Beatrice dynamic is what drives the film, but we’re also granted insight into the personality of this shop and its other employees, particularly a paranoid boss played by Frank Morgan (yes, the Wizard of Oz!), and the character of Budapest itself –a charming setting for a cast full of American actors.
It’s the same kind of charm that would be found in Lubitsch’s next film, the anti-Nazi classic To Be or Not To Be, which also made use of an American cast in a non-American setting, and had a similar sense of humour about its characters and their residence within a little world, that almost feels like a proto-workplace sitcom. In The Shop Around the Corner, there’s the eccentric boss Matuschek, the friendly family man (Felix Bressart) -who given the Christmas setting strikes me as the Bob Crachit of the office, the witty delivery boy (William Tracy) aching to be a Marx Brother, and the not particularly well-liked womanizing salesman (Joseph Schildkraut) who’s curiously queer-coded for being defined by a heterosexual trait. Two women, not as defined, played by Sara Haden and Inez Courtney, are employed in the shop as well; and then there’s Stewarts’ Alfred Kralik, top salesman, and the new girl Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) who outdoes him in a sale before she’s even hired.
This was the third of four movies to pair Sullavan with Stewart, an actor whom she’d helped to break out in the first place; and by this point they have a clear chemistry as they take on these quarrelling colleagues with very high standards in their potential partner, and honestly some superiority complexes themselves. And they are a delight to watch. I think because their interactions never get nasty it’s fun watching their repartee, and for the first half of the film at least it’s as even-handed as the barbs traded between their Shakespearean ancestors. Even though Kralik has the higher position in the company and is a man, you never feel like there’s a power imbalance between them. One does come of course after he is fired over a misunderstanding and discovers the truth before she does, but Lubitsch retains his respect for Novak, and never condescends to her character afterwards. You believe that she wouldn’t believe the man she’s in love with is actually Kralik.
And there is something beautiful to their relationship even after he finds out. That tension just simmers there as you wait for him to tell her the truth and as he begins to see her in a new light. Through that it’s also evident how lonely these people are and how much the correspondence means to them. The greatest expression of this is a scene after Kralik’s discovery, where Novak finds no new note in her letterbox. It’s a sombre moment, shot from the other side of the box as we only see her hand reach in and then falter ever so slightly at nothing being in there. She looks in as well, and for only an instant we see just how dispirited she is by it. Tender stuff like this and the shift in Kralik’s attitude toward Novak, that reveal the vulnerability beneath the cool, confident exteriors of this pair of unwitting star-crossed lovers engenders their humanity quite nicely. As pompous and proud as she remains to him even into the eleventh hour, the sincerity of her affections for the mystery man she’s fallen for are never in doubt, so that you yearn for her to know the truth and that this lovely couple would just get together already.
That final long scene between them too is surprisingly wonderful for how much it beats around the bush. Their whole conversation while she waits to meet her man, revealing a crush she’d had on Kralik when she first started at the shop, their newfound friendship, her hopes of a proposal (despite not having met this guy face-to-face!), and a bunch of hypotheticals, it’s all made compelling by their insatiable sexual chemistry, the moody romantic lighting of the dim shop highlighting the beautiful snow falling outside, and the strength of the writing (from Samson Raphaelson and an uncredited Ben Hecht), which throughout the film is very charming and might be the key to the power of the romance -it’s no wonder this film has been adapted for the stage. It’s honestly a perfect romantic, Christmas-y ending to a movie.
Unlike It’s a Wonderful Life, Christmas does feature in it a lot, as incidental as it may be to the fundamental tenets of the plot. There’s plenty of cozy holiday imagery and ornamentation throughout. And then there’s a subplot, barely tangentially related to the amours of Kralik and Novak that plays out a form of A Christmas Carol for the harsh boss. Matuschek suspects one of his staff is having an affair with his wife, and that it is probably Kralik. Ultimately he fires Kralik the very day he later learns from a private investigator that it was actually the company lothario instead. He attempts suicide but is saved by the delivery boy and has a change of heart while recuperating in the hospital, giving both his saviour and Kralik (whom he hires back) promotions. It’s arguably all padding, but padding done well, allowing for some of the other characters to get a few moments to shine and for the world of the Shop Around the Corner to be more fleshed out. And I love a good old Christmas transformation story, this one ending on a particularly swell note of Matuschek inviting the newest teenage employee, who has no family in Budapest, to join him for Christmas dinner.
It’s that kind of heartwarming stuff so poignantly executed that I think makes this movie special. What can I say, the Lubitsch touch is strong on this one. It’s also still very funny, smart and stylish –a hint once again perhaps to the wit and boldness of To Be or Not To Be; and I think Tracy especially leaves a good impression, one of the most enjoyable parts of the movie. As to the leads, the same year this came out, Stewart starred in the movie that would win him his only Oscar, The Philadelphia Story –and I think he was better here. Sullavan too deserves real praise, earnest as she is all the way through in both the characters’ highs and lows. For both actors, this was one of their last movies for a length of time. A few years later, Sullavan would retire from screen acting and return to the stage, where she felt most at home, for the duration of her career (excepting one brief comeback film in 1950). And in 1941, Stewart enlisted in the army, serving throughout World War II and putting his career on hiatus for over five years until, after considering alternative career options, he returned with (of course) It’s a Wonderful Life. Knowing that does cast the film in a different light, as defining a transitory period for both actors and for America itself; and being set in a Budapest free of the war it was then in real life contending with, The Shop Around the Corner has an idyllic otherworldliness to it that I find very comforting. Enough so that I could see myself coming back to it in years to come.
Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas one and all!
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