THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER

New Zealand Listener, Volume 3, Issue 53, 28 June 1940, Page 37

THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER

(M.-G.-M.) To the Hungarian playwright Ferenc Molnar, Hollywood — and M.-G.-M. in particular — owes some of its brightest comedies. Molnar’s plays are nearly all highly improbable, expertly-tailored affairs full of clever, complicated situations and generally pleasant characters. Nearly all have proved extremely suitable for screen purposes, but never more so than when handled by Ernst Lubitsch. In "The Shop Around the Corner," both Molnar and Lubitsch are at their best. Lubitsch calls this film a "miniature Grand Hotel," which simply means that it employs the familiar technique of taking a group of assorted characters, placing them together in a confined space, tying their lives in knots and then unravelling all the tangled threads. This time the locale is not a hotel, a liner, a passenger ’plane, or a desert island, but the leather-goods shop of Matuschek and Co., in Budapest. For Hungarians, the proprietor and employees of Matuschek and Co. behave very much like Americans. The fact that the cast is almost pure Hollywood may account for this, but it is hardly a fault. As I have said, Molnar’s plays readily lend themselves to Hollywood translation: he deals in types, and types are international. Margaret Sullavan leads the cast, and any film with Miss Sullavan in it starts with a lot in its favour, so far as I am concerned. Since I know that some pic-ture-goers take an opposite view, I'll content myself with challenging anybody who sees the show to suggest anybody more suitable than Margaret Sullavan for the role of little Klara Novak, the pathetic, rather drab, but spirited shopassistant whose yearning for romance leads her into writing to a "Lonely Hearts" correspondence agency. From the moment that fact is revealed, the audience knows how the plot will develop: that the anonymous soul-mate who corresponds with her on a plane of exalted passion is none other than the fellow worker, Kralik (James Stewart), whom she detests. But the epistolary love-life of these’ two, and their cat-and-dog behaviour in the shop, is only one part of the comedy and drama that goes on behind the windows of Matuschek and Co. There is the harassed but kindly proprietor (Frank Morgan) whose life is embittered by his wife’s unfaithfulness; there is the timid clerk (Felix Bressart) who is haunted by the fear of unemployment; there is the oily, conceited clerk Vadas, (Joseph Schildkraut); and there ‘is the cheeky office-boy (brilliantly played by William Tracy). With such a cast and

= with such a play, almost any producer could have made a good film; but Lubitsch has made an,outstanding one.