Synopsis
Two employees at a gift shop can barely stand one another, without realising that they are falling in love through the post as each other's anonymous pen pal.
1940 Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Two employees at a gift shop can barely stand one another, without realising that they are falling in love through the post as each other's anonymous pen pal.
Margaret Sullavan James Stewart Frank Morgan Joseph Schildkraut Sara Haden Felix Bressart William Tracy Inez Courtney Sarah Edwards Edwin Maxwell Charles Halton Charles Smith Charles Arnt Joan Blair Mary Carr Mabel Colcord Claire Du Brey William Edmunds Grace Hayle Mira McKinney Sol Murgi Renie Riano Gertrude Simpson Ruth Warren
Rendez-vous, Scrivimi fermo posta, El Bazar de las sorpresas, A Loja da Esquina, Магазинчик за углом, Kauppa kulman takana, Saroküzlet, Het winkeltje om den hoek, Den lille butik, To magazi tis gonias, Rendezvous nach Ladenschluß, Shop Around the Corner, The (1940)
I met my wife, Lise, through correspondence. Over 100 pages of e.mails through the entire month of August, 1999, before we finally met up on August 31st.
After our first perfunctory exchanges about who we were and what we liked, .. me: bands, biking, mixtapes and movies … Lise: bookcases, throw pillows, dogs and cats, and, amongst a list much longer than mine … ‘talking about movies’. Bingo.
Our next set of letters was all about the movies.
My top 10:
2001: A Space Odyssey
Doctor Zhivago
Dr. Strangelove
The Graduate
Brazil
The Deer Hunter
Blood Simple
Raising Arisona
Smash Palace
The Great Santini
One From the Heart
Bonus pick – Joe Versus the Volcano
Lise’s Top 10:
The Vanishing…
So perfectly constructed it can be easy to initially overlook its feeling of spontaneity and human interaction. Even a suicide attempt, framed indirectly by the pop of a light bulb, plays less as black comedy than an impossibly optimistic show of human empathy and interdependence. That its revelation of lovers' identities to each other occurs after all the bright lights have been turned off around them seems so fitting for a film that subtly inverts everything you expect while producing a paragon of generic entertainment.
imagine having a secret pen pal and them turning out to be jimmy stewart i would Die on the spot
I went into screenwriter mode about 30 minutes into the film. I could predict where it was going and how it was going to get there. I was enjoying it, but I knew where it was headed.
Ha!
HA! I said.
I've never been so happy to be so wrong, and JHC was I proved wrong. Every friggin' 10 minutes Lubitsch and the screenwriter and the playwright were giving me the middle finger salute and I was loving it. The writing would come at me sideways, I would adjust my expectations and then get hit from the other side 10 minutes later. On and on it went, and I was lapping it up laughing out loud with a smile wider…
Wait this movie is set in BUDAPEST? Jimmy Stewart's character is HUNGARIAN???
Cinematic Time Capsule
1940 Marathon - Film #5
”She's expecting to meet a pretty important man...
Well, I'm in no mood to act important tonight”
The Lubitsch Touch
Watch as Lubistch creates yet another cinematic cavalcade of charm in this fairy tale of false expectations, which even he referred to as “the best picture I ever made in my life”
Margaret Sullavan and Jimmy Stewart star as a couple of bickering store clerks who also happen to be secret pen-pals of love.
Every role in this film is so well written and performed that this little shop of charm actually becomes a world all its own and one I’d be happy to spend my time in over and over again.…
Like many households (I assume), we have a small tv in our kitchen, you know.. the one you have in doing dishes or meal prep or late night foraging... oddly enough it’s the only non hd tv in our house at this point (my old clunker in the basement kicked the bucket this past summer). It’s super small and has an old dial that many of you will remember clicking back and fourth. Anyway, while helping out my folks prepare stuff for tonight and tomorrow, this was spotted on cable and we all ended up standing there, huddled together, accomplishing zero work, and being utterly charmed by The Shop Around the Corner. What a wonderful little moment and wonderful little movie to get wrapped up in.
Decades Project: 3/4 of the 40's
"Well I really wouldn't care to scratch your surface, Mr. Kralik, because I know exactly what I'd find. Instead of a heart, a hand-bag. Instead of a soul, a suitcase. And instead of an intellect, a cigarette lighter... which doesn't work."
Growing up in the 90's, there were a lot of bad rom-coms in my house, and while they all became increasingly grating over time, there was always something effective about You've Got Mail. Don't get me wrong, it's not a great movie, but there are these moments where Tom Hanks knows that his business rival Meg Ryan is also his secret romantic pen pal which build tension in an almost Hitchcockian way (show…
I’m gonna say something. Nothing too crazy; just wanna declare my position on something. You likely won’t be surprised by this revelation. It’s a pretty common standpoint. A predictable opinion that many hold but not enough seem to share...
I love Jimmy Stewart.
He’s my favourite actor.
You’ve Got Mail would not exist without this film, nor would First Dates or Hinge or any other form of romantic set-up and I thank my lucky stars every day for Jimmy Stewart existing at the exact time and place that he did. My heart!!!!!
"I really wouldn't care to scratch your surface, Mr Kralik, because I know exactly what I'd find. Instead of a heart, a handbag. Instead of a soul, a suitcase. And instead of an intellect, a cigarette lighter... which doesn't work."
Maravillosa. Una de esas joyas clásicas que lamentablemente mucho espectador nunca llegará a descubrir.
Que la historia principal gire en torno a 2 personas anónimas conociéndose por carta ya es un hecho genial, pero la película nos deja otros detallazos, pues su calidad en los diálogos es deliciosa: la tabaquera, la no cita en el café, el clavel, la "despedida más discreta posible de Vadas", el dependiente Katona, el regalo de Navidad ideal, la forma en que Kralik derriba la idealización del prometido de la señorita Novak para mantener la tensión del desenlace hasta los últimos instantes...
Mucho a rescatar de esta película ambientada en Budapest.
Evitemos que esta obra de arte caiga en el olvido.
Por muitos anos eu amei o filme Mensagem Pra Você (You've got mail, com Tom Hanks e Meg Ryan) sem saber que era um remake desse filme.
Nem mesmo a nostalgia me cegou para o fato de que o original é mil vezes melhor do que o remake. Eu assisti esse filme 3 vezes seguidas, de tanto que gostei.
É leve, engraçado e romântico na medida certa pra mim. Super recomendo!
Ernst Lubitsch’s “The Shop Around The Corner” has one of the most unique romantic date sequences in the history of cinema.
Alfred Kralik : I think people who like to smoke candy and listen to cigarettes will love it.
Absolutely loved the simplicity. Not a fan of their love, but they cute..
For a film that's famed a two-hander set in in only a few locations, this is suh an exquisite ensemble piece. Every actor is dynamite here. Margaret Sullivan is a dime, and Jimmy Stewart is obviously the greatest American actor to live, but Frank Morgan as the multi-layered Mr. Matuschek, Joseph Schildkraut as the ass-kissing slimeball Vadas, Felix Bressart as the warm and sort of tattered Pirovitch, and William Tracy as an tricky Pepi. The other women of the shop get less time in comparison but even they work so well in their small moments.
The film's setting in Budapest with American actors not doing accent affection may sound silly theoretically, but it's a brilliant decision. There's an essence to…
Wow! The (relatively) new Warner Archive Blu-Ray looks amazing! Still one of my all time favourites.
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