Pen-Pals In Love –With Margaret Sullavan and Jimmy Stewarts’s The Shop Around The Corner In Mind

DVD Review

By Sam Lowell

The Shop Around The Corner, starring Margaret Sullavan, Jimmy Stewart, directed by Ernst Libitsch 1940

Nowadays with the advent of about seven different forms of social networking (including the ubiquitous “sexting” among the young, and their elders too from what I hear) a film about two young people who find their romantic fates intertwined anonymously while working together in the same employment would probably draw yawns, maybe a cynical snicker that of course that is the “proper” way to meet a mate-do you know that, stupid. In fact a more recent film, You’ve Got Mail, pays homage to that newer technology, newer than snail mail, to the now passe e-mail, as it pays homage to the original film adaptation of an Eastern European play, The Shop Around The Corner, reviewed here.

Technology aside this is another rather stylish romantic comedy set in Budapest “before the war” as the expression went then meaning before World War II (although while I am thinking about the matter why anybody bothered to decide to “fake” set it in that locale since the scenarios all looked like Hollywood sets and the actors all spoke if not the King’s English then at least English not the universal language of choose in 1940 Budapest). The romantic comedy part, the center of the whole film, is the knock down drag out relationship between Alfred the head salesman at a luggage and leather goods shop and Klara a newly hired employee who take every opportunity to put each other down.

But get this Alfred (played by James Stewart) and Klara (played by Margaret Sullavan) have been conducting a long distance high-mined pen-pal relationship with each other not knowing that they were corresponding with each other. You remember pen-pals in elementary school, right. You would write to some guy or girl in say Indianapolis and they would write back about school, summer vacations and stuff with no expectation of ever meeting, Indianapolis being a place that might as well have been on another planet then. Well back in those days adults could do the same except they expected to meet. The way they would do it is to answer “discreet” inquiries placed in the ‘Personal’ section of the newspaper if you can believe that. Then write each other by snail mail to post office boxes. Yeah, ancient history and in that time today a guy or gal could have already “dumped” or had about six affairs and had time for a long lunch without working up a sweat.                

Of course the Alfred-Klara build-up to real in person romance has to work its way through a few sub-plots to justify a couple of hours at the movie house back in the day. The shop owner suspicious of Alfred’s alleged attentions to his unseen on film fires him until he finds out that another employee has been stealing his wife’s time. The discovery has that shop owner suicidal which works out to Alfred’s benefit as he becomes the manager while the owner recovers. There is also some side action with the ambitious errant boy moving up the food chain by his own pluck and luck. Some play as well with a frightened to lose his job clerk who is something of an Alfred confidante.  

But make no mistake that the Alfred-Klara mix and match is the main draw here as they can hardly stay in the same room until Alfred accidently finds out that his fellow correspondent is none other than Klara. With that knowledge Alfred puts on a full-court press to wow the unknowing Klara. Classic Libitsch, classic feel good Hollywood. Watch the pros go through their paces even if you are too young to know about “Personals,” about writing high-brow love letters and going to the Post Office to conduct a love affair. Okay.