WHEN CINEMA MEETS THE SUBLIME: Ernst Lubitsch's THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER (1940, dir by Ernst Lubitsch with Jimmy Stewart, Margaret Sullivan, Frank Morgan, 97mns, MGM, 35mm)

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German born emigre director Ernst Lubitsch is rightly considered one of the brightest stars in the classic Hollywood filmmaking firmament.

He had such an innate sense of the intrinsic qualities of cinema that he became Paramount's head of production in the mid 1930's WHILE still directing movies (though he was fired a year later because he couldn't delegate). Lubitsch was a wunderkind like Irving Thalberg or Steven Spielberg or Alfred Hitchcock or Stanley Kubrick. A savant of cinema.

One of his proteges, world class moviemaker Billy Wilder, who co-wrote Lubitsch's 1939's comedy NINOTCHKA (Greta Garbo laughs!), had a big sign up in his office throughout his entire career that simply said: "What would Lubitsch do?".

There's an interesting juggling among Lubitsch lovers over whether TROUBLE IN PARADISE or THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER or TO BE OR NOT TO BE or DESIGN FOR LIVING is his masterpiece.

For this writer, it's a no brainer. 1940's THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER would be the greatest Christmas movie ever made in Hollywood if Frank Capra and Jimmy Stewart (again!) didn't pair up 6 years later and make IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE. But it's a photo finish, folks. These horses essentially cross the finish line at the same time.

THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, based on a play PARFUMERIE, follows the lives of the employees and owner of a Hungarian department store, Matushek & Company, during an eventful Christmas season.

The structure is classical: five acts. Acts I, II, IV, and V are single days at the store while ACT III is a Shakesperean hinge act in which head clerk Mr. Kralik (Jimmy Stewart) visits owner Mr. Matushek (Frank Morgan) at the hospital for a reconciliation.

In this simple perfect structure of a story, Lubitsch crafts a hilarious and insightful comedy in the day to day hopes of the 9-5 set. Lubitsch touches on everything from marital infidelity to capitalism to courtship to office politics to attempted suicide to nervous breakdowns to loneliness to Christmas Eve.

This is the essential stuff of the Lubitsch' secret sauce: the ability to touch on intense, taboo existential subjects with such elegance that you always feel you're in the presence of a close friend telling you a clever joke.

In this piece, we'll look at the famed "Lubitsch touch" then dive into an Act by Act examination of how Lubitsch put that cinematic "touch" to practical use in his cinema. We'll also briefly touch on the famed Margaret Sullavan and Jimmy Stewart relationship (as romantically charged off-screen as on-screen) that helped make Stewart a star and this movie a classic.

All these elements come together into that rarest of cinematic achievements, something sublime.

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"The Lubitsch Touch" Lubitsch got his start as an actor and in the theater with famed theater genius Max Reinhardt in the Berlin of the 1910's. Soon he found himself making some of Germany's earliest big budget movies.

Like much European talent, he was poached/lured to Hollywood where he spent the rest of his career until his untimely death of a heart attack in the late 1940's (purportedly after an assignation with a sex worker).

The German life-lover hated to say things the obvious way. Instead, Lubitsch delighted in finding ways to "suggest" things in the audience's mind that couldn't be said out loud in the tight strictures of Hollywood cinema.

Something was always getting in the way of Sullavan and Stewart consummating their affection off screen. Here it’s Lubitsch with his damn cigar.

Lubitsch was the movie mathematician who loved to give you the equation: 3 + 2...

But let you the audience add it up to 5. And the audience loved him for it.

An example this writer once read (though it may be a loose translation of what actually happened in the movie) was how Lubitsch had a scene where a married woman went into a bedroom with a soldier who we see taking off his belt as the door closes. Sometime later, her husband arrives and goes into the bedroom and takes off his belt. Later, when the husband leaves the bedroom he tries to put back on his belt only to discover it doesn't fit at all and seems made for a much slimmer, in shape man...

99 times out of 100, moviemakers would just play that scene with the husband getting told about or seeing his wife cheating on him.

Not Ernst.

Billy Wilder defines the Lubitsch touch this way "It was the elegant use of the Superjoke. You had a joke, and you felt satisfied, and then there was one more big joke on top of it. The joke you didn't expect."

One of this writer's favorite Lubitsch touches happens in Lubitsch's 1929 musical THE LOVE PARADE. The male lead sings goodbye to all these beautiful women listening to him at their respective windows. Then the lead's butler sings and all the Maids listen to the Butler at their respective windows. Then the lead's Dog sings and all the other female dogs listen to the Dog at their windows.

The Lubitsch touch was put to use smuggling in racy or "sophisticated" intimations into Hollywood movies that couldn't say such things directly. Suggestions of menage a trois, hot sexual encounters, strange sexual proclivities were hustled past the censors not so much because they were well hidden but because they were so damn enjoyable and clever.

Howard Hawks said the Hollywood Hayes code censors would let a bit more get by if you did it with true genius and cleverness. Lubitsch had both.

In THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, Lubitsch's personal favorite of all his movies, the director goes beyond and puts that touch at the service of a profound, painful, and observant humanism. And creates the most keenly observant movie of his career.

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ACT I: A typical day at Matushek & Company

In a tight 97 minutes that puts all us moviemakers on notice that you don't need two and a half hours, Lubitsch tells a story of existence itself and you feel nothing is lacking.

Lubitsch's own father and family, Ashkanazi Jews, came out of the store and tailoring trade. So Lubitsch often said THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER was a kind of love letter to the work environment he remembers of his parents and their generation.

With the help of top tier screenwriters Samson Raphelson (a Lubitsch regular collaborator) and Ben Hecht (the GO-TO for the best screenplays), THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER is a clinic in how to tell a story through cinema and sparkling dialogue. And then transcend that.

Each Act begins outside the Matushek & Company store as the employees and owner arrive.

The Office before The Office.

It's Christmas season and we quickly get a sense of the personalities of all who work behind the counter. The movie is THE OFFICE sixty years before THE OFFICE. There's hard working if seeming unromantic Mr. Kralik (Jimmy Stewart), Mr. Matushek's most trusted head clerk. There's lovable drone Mr. Pirovich who sees everything but doesn't want to get caught expressing an opinion that could get him in trouble. There's the toady Mr. Vadish who simultaneously schemes and flatters. There's cocky errand boy Pepe who would love to stop running errands for the never seen but clearly delineated vain, spoiled, and aging Mrs. Matushek. There are loyal clerks Ilona and Flora who don't want to disturb any waters.

And then there's Mr. Matushek (The Wizard of Oz's Frank Morgan in possibly his best performance), an entrepreneur and business owner, who loves making money. Not in a Scrooge like way (he's actually a teddy bear to his employees behind his gruff exterior) but just in a way that you sense business owners must really thrill at when their business makes a return.

Enter into this daily hum drum routine the stubborn, smart, indepenent Ms. Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan). A whip smart if slightly pretentious, independent woman looking for a job.

She and Mr. Kralik immediately don't get along. Little do they know, they are pen pals (the Tinder of its time) who have an intense love affair going. . .on paper. . .through letters outside the store.

During this first act, Lubitsch sets EVERYTHING up. We can see that Mrs. Matushek may be having an affair. We can see who gets along and doesn't get along at the store. We can see that Kralik has a real business sense that Mr. Matushek has come to rely on, etc.

Act I also establishes the elegant cinematic language so necessary for the delicate balancing act of tone needed for this story. Lubitsch and ace MGM cinematographer William Daniels perfect a dancelike choreography as the employees walk to and from Mr. Matushek's office as the camera tracks, pulls, pushes with them.

If Hollywood has taught us anything, it’s that two people so obviously disinterested in each other are going to end up madly in love by the end of this picture…

ACT II: Christmas season starts and so do the problems.

The next day starts outside like the first. But Lubitsch now begins to work his magic and reveal the complications. Mr. Vadish arrives via taxi (the transport of the wealthy) and we know (without being told) it is he who is having an affair with Mrs. Matushek and using her as a sugar mama. We see that Mr. Matushek wrongly suspects Kralik.

The magic of this second act is that it is all ready paying off a series of "plants" made in the first act. Mr. Matushek wanted to know both Mr. Kralik's (negative) and Ms. Novak's (positive) opinion of Olchi Tchochoyna cigarette boxes in the first act. Now we see that Mr. Kralik was right (the boxes aren't selling) but Ms. Novak also got a job (since she was able to sell a box to a customer).

The day ends dramatically with Mr. Matushek firing Mr. Kralik then learning after the store has closed via a detective that it was Vadish having the affair. Mr. Matushek says, in a line that always tears this writer apart, "I guess she just didn't want to grow old with me."

A moment later, errand boy Pepe arrives just in time to stop Mr. Matushek from shooting himself in his office.

It's hard to imagine many moviemakers who could pull off a movie that is as enjoyable a comedy as this AND insert a scene of despair and near suicide.

We then go to a cafe where Mr. Kralik learns that his lover/pen pal is none other than Ms. Novak who has been treating him condescendingly in the store. BUT. . .Ms. Novak doesn't yet know Kralik is the person behind the letters she has fallen in love with.

Ah, now Kralik knows something Novak does not. And so the dramatic irony gets rich…

Lubitsch has a running gag from the opening credits to the closing credits with the Russian folk tune called "Dark Eyes" (Olchi Tchechoyna) that carries the emotional themes of the movie. In the opening and closing titles, the melody is played as a jaunty Hollywood dance jitterbug (letting us know, don't worry folks, this is a popcorn comedy). It then gets played as the melody of the cigarette box that Mr. Kralik thinks is a bad product for the store but which Ms. Novak uses to prove she's a great salesperson. Thus it becomes a symbol of their antagonism and in person disagreement.

Now, at the cafe, the band inside plays the same theme. So that the theme becomes a dynamic development of Ms. Novak and Mr. Kralik's deepening love-hate romance.

ACT III: The Reconciliation and hospital room

Lubitsch and his team break the morning-night structure in Act III for Matushek and Kralik to reconcile in Matushek's hospital room. Like Shakespeare would sometimes do, this is a short "hinge" act to connect two symmetrical halves of a structure. From this point forward, Kralik will work to put things right at the store and in his romance with Ms. Novak.

Also, Lubitsch will use the rest of the movie to show everyone "healing" from the hurts of the first half of the movie.

ACT IV: Kralik is manager

Office politics…

This act and Act V return to the morning-night work shift at Matushek & Company structure of Acts I and II. Here Lubitsch continues building on his intricate architecture of plants and payoffs. Vadish finally gets fired for all his scheming and selfish behavior. In one great Lubitsch touch, Mr. Kralik pushes Vadish to the floor (knocking over all the unsold Ochi Tchechoyna boxes). All the employees go to gather the boxes NOT to help Vadish.

Ms. Novak is now heartbroken as she thinks her pen pal lover has stood her up. The final two acts are a fascinating structure as Mr. Kralik essentially gets a kind of compassionate but definite revenge on Ms. Novak for being so patronizing and judgmental of him. BUT. . .Lubitsch still has a trick up his sleeve...

Ms. Novak, still emotionally distracted since she thinks her lover didn't show up to the cafe, can't believe Kralik is manager and faints. Kralik visits her at home where she gets a new "letter" from her lover/pen pal. Lubitsch is sharp in his ability to mine dramatic irony as Kralik gets to see her reaction to a letter we know he has written.

ACT V: Christmas Eve

Without us even realizing it, THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER becomes a Christmas movie. But one with the wry knowing irony of a filmmaker who also knows that Christmas is a joy for business owners because they are SELLING A LOT OF THINGS.

Frank Morgan’s performance as Mr. Matushek is one of the unsung gems from classic Hollywood’s greatest era.

When Mr. Matushek returns to see how his store is doing, he has a warm joyous smile on his face. NOT because he has learned the meaning of Christmas from three spirits in the night but because his register bells are constantly ringing with new purchases.

This doesn't make Mr. Matushek a miser. Far from it. But he IS a real character who says devastatingly and honestly "this shop is my home" in the realization that he has had success here he hasn't had at home.

Lubitsch wraps up all the storylines in this final act with the final "superjokes" he's developed throughout. It is a deep warm happy ending for Matushek and Company though not a definitive one. And it's the ephemeral happiness that gives SHOP its profundity. Lubitsch doesn't make any directorial claims that all is solved. He just points out that this particular day happens to end on a good note for the earnest people trying to do their jobs. They have a good business day. They get bonuses. They go home to their families to celebrate Christmas.

In a very touching scene, Matushek realizes everyone has plans as they all politely decline his offer to go with him for dinner at a fancy restaurant. But then, the new errand boy Rudy, whom Matushek barely knows, reveals his "folks aren't in the city". And so Matushek invites a near stranger to dine with him so they both won't be lonely on Christmas eve.

The final scene of course is between Ms. Novak and Mr. Kralik. Lubitsch strings out the "will they or won't they" romantic tension to the very last minute of this very last nine minute scene. Another example of a master at the height of his craft in terms of understanding how best to wring every cinematic fleck of gold out of the claim. Lubitsch also stays true to his characters and even introduces a character surprise.

Ms. Novak reveals she treated Mr. Kralik poorly because she had read that was a way to get a man to fall for you. But it back fired. Ms. Novak realized that only works if you're a woman of wealth or power not a lowly working class clerk.

Though Ms. Novak and Mr. Kralik have always been basically good people, Ms. Novak has always been a bit arrogant and Mr. Kralik has always been a bit workmanlike and unromantic (when not writing letters). The very last exchange of the movie is a kind of transactional "proof of quality" of purchase that is a sweet quiet final joke that shows these two should make a good couple. . .but will still be the same people who argued from the first act.

Sullavan was the bigger star in the 1930's. Jimmy Stewart didn't really blow up until 1939-1941. And though most think they DID NOT consummate their romantic affection for each other off screen, most do THINK that Stewart was very much in love with Sullavan. And this accounted for the undeniable chemistry the two had in their many 1930's-1940's collaborations. Sullavan also helped Stewart with his film acting technique and predicted he would be a big star. So when you watch a movie like THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER you can't help but sense how all the off screen respect, emotion, tension, instruction, mentorship served the cinematic working relationship.

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THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER is a sublime Christmas movie in that it is ultimately about mercy, forgiveness, compassion, redemption, rebirth, and renewal. But all those values are expressed through the wry half pursed lips of cigar chomping Lubitsch who also knows enough about human nature to know the story is also about pride, making money, passing judgement, not wanting to get fired, etc.

It's so hard to land the plane of a story with a tone that needs to embrace both romantic comedy and existential despair. Most movie planes wobble with the turbulence of either sentiment or sourness. As if most us moviemakers don't know if it's worse to be too optimistic and simplistic or too defensive and cynical. Lubitsch is that rare bird: a clear eyed skeptic with a wry sense of humour who still loves life and people.

Someone who knows nobody likes to be told 2+ 3 = 5 but rather set up to figure out that 2 + 3 =... Everyone likes to be flirted with, complimented, seduced, flattered with a little dance, a little game.

Nobody can play that game like Lubitsch. And in THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER, he puts his talents to use towards the expression of the most humanist and sublime of messages.

And what's more Christmas than that?

Craig Hammill is the founder.head programmer of Secret Movie Club.