Post by klep on Dec 23, 2019 10:26:10 GMT -6
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 12/23: The Shop Around the Corner
HOLIDAY WEEK!
Note: This week's essay is graciously provided by a guest contributor.
Ernst Lubitsch was born in 1892 in Berlin, Germany, and came to America under contract to Mary Pickford. He transitioned successfully from silent film to talkies, taking advantage of the medium to make some of the first musicals. In the thirties, he moved fully into comedy, a genre he never left. In 1940, with war raging in Europe, Lubitsch and screenwriter Samson Raphaelson collaborated on The Shop Around the Corner.
The Shop Around the Corner ignores the wider world of geopolitics in favor of an intimate romance set in Hungary. One of the great pleasures of The Shop Around the Corner is the attention it chooses to give the day-to-day rhythms of a little shop like Matuschek and Co., and the way the setting feels not just real, but lived in. (Hungary is also presented as just another pace to set a movie, rather than any kind of Exotic Place Far Away.) Our protagonists don't want to be a hero or a soldier or the next Joan of Arc; they have simple desires, to pay the bills and find love and to take care of the people around them. Jimmy Stewart uses his next-door charm perfectly as the young employee who doesn't always know when to back down, and he and Margaret Sullavan have perfect chemistry as co-workers who squabble by day but have been exchanging impassioned letters as anonymous pen pals. When Stewart finds out the secret, we feel every bit of his conflict - to tell, or not to tell? The outcome's never really in doubt, but we feel the tension anyway.Their romance anchors the film, but the rest of the cast does laudable work as well, most notably Frank Morgan as the gruff but vulnerable Matuschek. The 'Lubitsch touch' was coined by marketers back in the silent era, and while critics differ on that that 'touch' actually means, I always recognize it in the light-but-not frivolous feeling he brings to his films, and the way I always leave them with a smile. The Shop Around the Corner is generous, warm, and a wonderful, charming movie to watch this time of year.
(On a historical note: Lubitsch, Raphaelson, and playwright Miklós László were all Jewish, László Hungarian, and The Shop Around the Corner was released the year that Hungary joined the Axis. While I can't find any reference to politics regarding the movie, aside from a note or two that this movie firmly ignores politics, I can't help but read the movie as something of a love letter to a city that had been lost to these men, perhaps forever. Lubitsch, who was heavily active in the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and the European Film Fund, would later take his own crack at the Nazis in the brilliant To Be Or Not To Be.)
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 12/30: Yentl
MUSICALS WEEK!
For Musicals Week we'll be watching the Barbara Streisand classic Yentl, about a young Jewish girl in the early 20th century who pretends to be a boy to get an education. Come join us next week for our discussion! Yentl is available for rent in the usual places, and for free on Vudu.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 12/24: Knives Out
The podcast crew closes its pairing with Rian Johnson's latest effort Knives Out. Come join our discussion on Wednesday of this brilliant detective mystery, still in theaters.
HOLIDAY WEEK!
Note: This week's essay is graciously provided by a guest contributor.
Ernst Lubitsch was born in 1892 in Berlin, Germany, and came to America under contract to Mary Pickford. He transitioned successfully from silent film to talkies, taking advantage of the medium to make some of the first musicals. In the thirties, he moved fully into comedy, a genre he never left. In 1940, with war raging in Europe, Lubitsch and screenwriter Samson Raphaelson collaborated on The Shop Around the Corner.
The Shop Around the Corner ignores the wider world of geopolitics in favor of an intimate romance set in Hungary. One of the great pleasures of The Shop Around the Corner is the attention it chooses to give the day-to-day rhythms of a little shop like Matuschek and Co., and the way the setting feels not just real, but lived in. (Hungary is also presented as just another pace to set a movie, rather than any kind of Exotic Place Far Away.) Our protagonists don't want to be a hero or a soldier or the next Joan of Arc; they have simple desires, to pay the bills and find love and to take care of the people around them. Jimmy Stewart uses his next-door charm perfectly as the young employee who doesn't always know when to back down, and he and Margaret Sullavan have perfect chemistry as co-workers who squabble by day but have been exchanging impassioned letters as anonymous pen pals. When Stewart finds out the secret, we feel every bit of his conflict - to tell, or not to tell? The outcome's never really in doubt, but we feel the tension anyway.Their romance anchors the film, but the rest of the cast does laudable work as well, most notably Frank Morgan as the gruff but vulnerable Matuschek. The 'Lubitsch touch' was coined by marketers back in the silent era, and while critics differ on that that 'touch' actually means, I always recognize it in the light-but-not frivolous feeling he brings to his films, and the way I always leave them with a smile. The Shop Around the Corner is generous, warm, and a wonderful, charming movie to watch this time of year.
(On a historical note: Lubitsch, Raphaelson, and playwright Miklós László were all Jewish, László Hungarian, and The Shop Around the Corner was released the year that Hungary joined the Axis. While I can't find any reference to politics regarding the movie, aside from a note or two that this movie firmly ignores politics, I can't help but read the movie as something of a love letter to a city that had been lost to these men, perhaps forever. Lubitsch, who was heavily active in the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League and the European Film Fund, would later take his own crack at the Nazis in the brilliant To Be Or Not To Be.)
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 12/30: Yentl
MUSICALS WEEK!
For Musicals Week we'll be watching the Barbara Streisand classic Yentl, about a young Jewish girl in the early 20th century who pretends to be a boy to get an education. Come join us next week for our discussion! Yentl is available for rent in the usual places, and for free on Vudu.
NEXT PICTURE SHOW PODCAST for 12/24: Knives Out
The podcast crew closes its pairing with Rian Johnson's latest effort Knives Out. Come join our discussion on Wednesday of this brilliant detective mystery, still in theaters.