Today marks the 80thanniversary of the premiere of what has been called Ernst Lubitsch’s “most discreet tour de force of art concealing art,” The Shop Around the Corner (1940). That’s a nicely spun phrase; some might simply call it perfection…
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When she was asked, many years after his death, which of her uncle’s films was most like him, Ernst Lubitsch’s niece replied, “The Shop Around the Corner.” Lubitsch, a director lauded for his ineffable “touch” and mentor to Billy Wilder, who famously hung a sign over his own desk that asked, “How would Lubitsch do it?,” was well into his filmmaking career by the time he produced and directed “the movie most like him” in 1940.
Ernst Lubitsch
Born in Berlin in 1892, Ernst Lubitsch took to the arts as a child and effectively side-stepped a career in his father’s clothing shop by entering drama school. He had joined Max Reinhardt’s famed theatrical ensemble by the time he was 19 and two years later appeared in his first film. Lubitsch continued as an actor in German films until 1920, but in 1918 he began directing. Within a few short years three films he directed in Germany – Madame Du Barry, Anna Boleyn and Carmen/Gypsy Blood – were included on the New York Times list of the best films of 1921. That same year he would make his first foray to the U.S. and in 1922 Ernst Lubitsch would return to the states, contracted to direct Rosita (1923) for Mary Pickford. It was a hit and he would stay on and go on, over the next 25 years, to make some of the great timeless - and most sophisticated - romantic comedies of Hollywood’s classic era. Along with The Shop Around the Corner, best remembered among them are Trouble in Paradise (1932), Design for Living (1933), Ninotchka (1939), To Be or Not to Be (1942), Heaven Can Wait (1943) and his final completed film, Cluny Brown (1946).The Shop Around the Corner was Lubitsch’s first film of the 1940s, the last decade of his too-short life, and is as rich and smooth a film as any in his late career canon.
Based on a popular play of 1937, Parfumerie by Hungarian playwright Miklos Laszlo, the film was adapted for the screen by Samuel Raphaelson, Lubitsch’s screenwriter on most of his best films. Masterfully re-tooling Laszlo's work, Raphaelson would relocate the story from a perfumery to a specialty gift shop, streamline and rearrange elements of the play, and ultimately deliver a sparkling, finely-honed film script.
The story is set in picturesque pre-war Budapest during a bustling snow-dusted Christmas season. Not far from the city’s historic Andrassy Street is Matuschek & Company, purveyor of unique personal gifts. Within its walls an assortment of souls toil mostly in harmony under the anxious oversight of the shop’s owner, Hugo Matuschek (Frank Morgan ). Alfred Kralik (James Stewart) is Matuschek’s top salesman and his most favored and trusted employee. Kralik’s co-workers include his friend Pirovitch (Felix Bressart), a devoted family man, Vadas (Joseph Schildkraut) an unctous Casanova, saleswoman Ilona Novotny (Inez Courtney), the store’s clerk Flora Kaczek (Sara Haden) and wise-cracking delivery boy Pepi Katona (William Tracy). Soon a new face will join the Matuschek sales force, pretty and persnickety Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan), hired on the spot by Matuschek to the consternation of Kralik, who initially turned down her bid for a job. Naturally, Kralik and Klara don’t hit it off right away. And not for a long time.
Personal stories emerge as the holiday season deepens. We learn that Kralik is involved in a romance with an anonymous pen pal. And so is Klara. We discover that Mr. Matuschek’s marriage is in trouble. He suspects his frivolous high-maintenance wife (think Ruth Chatterton in Dodsworth) may be involved in an extramarital dalliance. And so the shop is abuzz with internecine intrigue and Christmas trade.
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"The Lubitsch Touch" is not so well known in Hollywood today as it was 60, 70 and 80 years ago. What was it?
"How would Lubitsch do it?" The sign over Billy Wilder's work desk
Billy Wilder believed, "It was the elegant use of the Superjoke. You had a joke and you felt satisfied, and then there was one more big joke on top of it. The joke you didn't expect. That was the Lubitsch Touch..."
Lubitsch biographer Joseph McBride noted that "The Lubitsch Touch is about laughter, but it is also about character and the endlessly inventive and fresh ways the director found to tell stories..."
Film critic Andrew Sarris wrote, "A poignant sadness infiltrates the director's gayest moments, and it is this counterpoint between sadness and gaiety that represents the Lubitsch touch..."
One of his most accomplished peers, William Wyler, would say, "Ernst Lubitsch was truly the auteur of his films. He created a style of sophisticated comedy peculiarly his own, as well as a new style of musical, both unknown before his time. His films bore the recognizable and indelible stamp of the gay, clever, witty, mischievous master, whose delightful personality matched his work."
High style, sophistication, wit, charm...and poignancy, it's all there, and it is delectable. Fellow director and emigre Edward G. Ullmer so admired Lubitsch's ability to so deftly combine humor with class that he mused, "he really should have been a Frenchman." Every filmmaker of his time - from Chaplin to Hitchcock to Welles to Ford admired him. Even today Martin Scorsese, who not only knows but also reveres film and film history, extols his genius.
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On the right, Matuschek & Co. in old Budapest, near Andrassy Street
Of The Shop Around the Corner Ernst Lubitsch wrote, "Never did I make a picture in which the atmosphere and the characters were truer." He took special care with this film, one of his own favorites. From the first strains of "Ochi Tchornya" heard as Leo the Lion roars, and the first snowy glimpse of Budapest's quaint cobbled streets, the atmosphere and spirit of old Europe come to life. The characters who will populate this enchanting scene are no less affecting. James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan made four films together and by the time they co-starred in Shop, their third, the onscreen chemistry between them was both smooth as silk and intense. Stewart is an entirely appealing Kralik, the hardworking sales clerk with a surprisingly romantic sensibility. But Sullavan has the more difficult task; Klara is high-strung, snappish and pretentious through much of the film. The actress makes graceful work of revealing Klara's softer side and bringing sympathy to her insecurities as the film moves into its finale. Outstanding in the superb supporting cast are Frank Morgan as volatile and complex Matuschek, and Felix Bressart as gentle, good-hearted Pirovitch.An exquisitely balanced mix of drama and comedy, The Shop Around the Corner ends with two heartwarming pairings. Mr. Matuschek will, in a most kind act, share his Christmas Eve dinner with a new employee who, like he, might otherwise have spent the evening alone. And, in one of the most beautifully written and acted scenes in all of romantic comedy, Kralik and Klara will finally discover each other.~ And now, Let's open a bottle of rare and fine Hungarian Tokaji Aszú and properly celebrate the 80th anniversary of this Ernst Lubitsch masterpiece. Let us lift our glasses and offer a toast to "the Lubitsch Touch," so elegantly illuminated in The Shop Around the Corner.
Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart, whose onscreen chemistry was legendary
