After being recommended this film and seeing it pop up on enough "best of holiday flicks" lists, I decided to finally give it a watch. Unfortunately, despite a solid cast and a interesting kernel of an idea, I found "The Shop Around The Corner" to be perplexingly disinterested in its main conceit, to the detriment of the overall experience.
For a very basic overview, this film focuses on a group of individuals working at a sort of knick-knack shop owned by Mr. Matuschek (Frank Morgan). More specifically, employee Alfred Kralick (Jimmy Stewart) becoming continually exasperated--personally and professionally--with new hire Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan). Unbeknownst (at least for a time) to both parties, however, they are also each other's romantic/mysterious pen pals, corresponding through letters as they bicker in person.
There's no doubt that "Shop Around The Corner" is based upon an interesting idea: two people who seemingly hate each other in real life are over-the-moon for each other strictly based on written correspondence. The problem here, though, is that this central conceit is bafflingly given very little rope to play out. Viewers are never given a scene of, say, Kralick writing one of his letters, and when we finally do see Ms. Novak read one, it is played more for comedy than anything. I just never felt much romantic chemistry between the two for that reason.
Instead, we get numerous subplots involving the store, such as the owner's attempted suicide, his wife's infidelity (with a store employee), and the upward trajectory of a young "errand boy". All of those angles--and more--are generally fun and contain their own little revelations or witticisms. Yet, taken as a whole, they also largely overshadow the Kralick/Novak dynamic that needs to be so central for a movie like this to really work.
Perhaps this is a film better enjoyed in its cultural time period. Perhaps I just "didn't get it", so to speak. Either way, while I was certainly never bored or outrightly disappointed with any of the on-screen happenings, none of it really made much of an emotional impact on me, either.
For a very basic overview, this film focuses on a group of individuals working at a sort of knick-knack shop owned by Mr. Matuschek (Frank Morgan). More specifically, employee Alfred Kralick (Jimmy Stewart) becoming continually exasperated--personally and professionally--with new hire Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan). Unbeknownst (at least for a time) to both parties, however, they are also each other's romantic/mysterious pen pals, corresponding through letters as they bicker in person.
There's no doubt that "Shop Around The Corner" is based upon an interesting idea: two people who seemingly hate each other in real life are over-the-moon for each other strictly based on written correspondence. The problem here, though, is that this central conceit is bafflingly given very little rope to play out. Viewers are never given a scene of, say, Kralick writing one of his letters, and when we finally do see Ms. Novak read one, it is played more for comedy than anything. I just never felt much romantic chemistry between the two for that reason.
Instead, we get numerous subplots involving the store, such as the owner's attempted suicide, his wife's infidelity (with a store employee), and the upward trajectory of a young "errand boy". All of those angles--and more--are generally fun and contain their own little revelations or witticisms. Yet, taken as a whole, they also largely overshadow the Kralick/Novak dynamic that needs to be so central for a movie like this to really work.
Perhaps this is a film better enjoyed in its cultural time period. Perhaps I just "didn't get it", so to speak. Either way, while I was certainly never bored or outrightly disappointed with any of the on-screen happenings, none of it really made much of an emotional impact on me, either.