Set in pre-war Budapest in the run-up to Christmas, Ernst Lubitsch’s enchanting romantic comedy The Shop Around The Corner charts the ups and downs in the relationship between two sales assistants – Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) and Alfred Kralik (James Stewart) – who work together at the luxury leather goods store Matuschek and Company. Locked in a bitter professional rivalry, they bicker and squabble on the shop floor by day; in private, however, they are passionately engaged in a secret, letter-writing love affair – anonymous correspondents who never suspect each other’s true identity.
With a dazzling script by Lubitsch’s favourite writer Samson Raphaelson, the film is a masterly comedy of misunderstandings between two people who are too in love with the idea of love for their own and each other’s good.
