Inspired in part by Ernst Lubitsch’s father’s experiences running a small tailor shop in Berlin, The Shop Around the Corner stars James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as antagonistic coworkers at a small leather goods store in Budapest, Hungary. They work for the warm but nervous Mr. Matuschek (Frank Morgan), but their minds are often on other things: without knowing it, Stewart and Sullavan have been sending love letters to one another in an anonymous pen-pal courtship, letters so steamy and intellectual that the rest of us could only dream of them. Though Lubitsch thought of The Shop Around the Corner as a little picture (its production cost was a relatively lean half-million 1940 dollars), it may be his most universal — an empathetic, loving, and ironic comedy that allows us to see the heartaches, hopes, frustrations, and daydreams of characters who can barely begin to understand people they work with nearly every day. A romance on the surface, the film also has a unique and genuine feel for the fragile ecosystem of small businesses, and the complicated, unconventional families that inhabit them. 

35mm from the Library of Congress, permission Park Circus

Preceded by: “Bargain Madness” (Dave O’Brien, 1951) – 9 min – 35mm