THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER
This 1940 romantic comedy is an adaptation of a play by one Miklos Laszlo. Hats off to him for coming up with a brilliant concept that has gone on to be used in several films and musicals. Anyone who has seen 'You've Got Mail' will know the basic idea: two people falling in love with each other through correspondence, all the while not realising that the object of their affection is someone they know and think they dislike. In the case of the play and this film, the setting is turn-of-the-century Budapest. It takes a little while to get used to the idea of James Stewart as an Hungarian shop assistant but once I was over that small hurdle this confection was a delight from start to finish. And who better to serve it up than Ernst Lubitsch, a master of this type of light sophisticated material? Stewart is Mr Kralik, who works in a leather goods shop owned by Mr Matuschek. Besides the romance plot there is a secondary storyline in which Mr Matuschek suspects Kralik ...