For the next three months, Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I will be watching cozy, mysterious, or comfy movies. I think maybe cozy and comfy is the same thing, but you know what I mean. Erin made these awesome graphics detailing what we are doing and what movies we will be watching.

If you want to join in and give us your impressions of the movies we watch you are more than welcome to do so!

This week we watched The Shop Around the Corner with Jimmy Stewart, Margaret Sullavan (yes, this spelling threw me off but that was her actual last name), and Frank Morgan.

If you watch this movie and think that Frank Morgan looks very familiar but you just can’t place him, just imagine him saying, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

Yes. He was The Wizard in The Wizard of Oz.

In this movie, he is Mr. Matuschek, who owns a leather goods store in Budapest, Hungary called Matuschek and Company. They pronounced Matuschek as “Matachek” in the movie. His top salesman and most trusted employee is Alfred Kralik (Jimmy).

The movie opens with all the employees gathering together and letting us all get to know a bit about them.

Besides Kralik there are Kralik’s coworkers include Karlik’s friend, Pirovitch (Felix Bressart), a kindly family man; Ferencz Vadas (Joseph Schildkraut), a two-faced womanizer; saleswoman Ilona Novotny (Inez Courtney); clerk Flora Kaczek (Sara Haden); and Pepi Katona (William Tracy), a sassy errand boy.

We also learn in the beginning that Stewart has been writing letters to a woman he connected with through a newspaper ad she placed.

They’ve been hitting it off, and he’s getting ready to actually meet her.

On this same day, Mr. Matuschek comes into the store with a bunch of musical cigarette boxes that he has to figure out how to sell. Mr. Kralik disagrees that Mr. Matuschek can sell the cigarette boxes and they have a brief spat.

Enter Margaret Sullavan as Klara Novak. She’s looking for a job and proceeds to sell one of the boxes to a customer. Mr. Matuschek hires her on the spot, much to the disappointment of Mr. Kralik, who doesn’t like the threat to his position but also finds her a bit pushy.

Enter a very popular trope in romance movies – enemies to lovers.

This trope has a couple twists, though, and that makes the movie interesting and more than just a romance.

The funny thing about the movie is that it is supposed to take place in Hungary but almost everyone has a New York/American accent.

This was a bit of a goofy movie with a couple of serious themes mixed in. It features wonderful bantering between Stewart and Sullivan and some really great acting from Stewart, especially. I don’t know that I would say Sullivan was a “great” actress in this, but she was very good and held her own against Stewart’s strong personality.

According to TCM: “James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan had known each other a long time before making The Shop Around the Corner. Both were in a summer stock company called the University Players. It was there that Stewart realized his potential as an actor, so he followed Sullavan and fellow player Henry Fonda to New York to begin an acting career in earnest.

Even though Margaret Sullavan was infamous for her quick temper and disdainful attitude towards Hollywood, James Stewart counted working with her as one of the great joys of his professional career. And because he knew her personally, he was more equipped than most of the cast and crew members to deal with her frequent and volatile emotional outbursts.”

I also loved this tidbit that TCM shared: “Stewart said: “We were in this little restaurant and I had the line: ‘I will come out on the street and I will roll my trousers up to my knees.’ For some reason, I couldn’t say it. She was furious. She said, ‘This is absolutely ridiculous.’ There I was standing with my trousers rolled up to my knees, very conscious of my skinny legs, and I said, ‘I don’t want to act today; get a fellow with decent legs and just show them.’ Margaret said, ‘Then I absolutely refuse to do the picture.’ So we did more takes.”

You can read the full article here: https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/413/the-shop-around-the-corner/#articles-reviews?articleId=26807

The movie was based on the 1936 Hungarian play Parfumerie. The 1998 movie You’ve Got Mail, which starred Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, was based on that play as well.

The musical In The Good Ole’ Summertime is an almost scene-for-scene musical remake of The Shop Around the Corner.

I don’t want to give too much of the movie away, but there is a falling out between Mr. Matuschek and Kralik and a firing, but it is all over a misunderstanding involving Mrs. Matuschek. There are actually a lot of misunderstandings in this movie, and some of them are quite funny and interesting.

There are some great lines in this movie including:

Alfred Kralik: There might be a lot we don’t know about each other. You know, people seldom go to the trouble of scratching the surface of things to find the inner truth.

Klara Novak (Miss Novak) : 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 handbag. Instead of a soul, a suitcase. And instead of an intellect, a cigarette lighter… which doesn’t work.

Klara: [In her letter to Alfred] : Oh, my Dear Friend, my heart was trembling as I walked into the post office, and there you were, lying in Box 237. I took you out of your envelope and read you, read you right there.

Klara : Mr. Kralik, it’s true we’re in the same room, but we’re not on the same planet.

Alfred: Why Miss Novak, although I’m the victim of your remark, I can’t help admiring the exquisite way you have of expressing yourself. You certainly know how to put a man in his planet.

And this one from Klara, I would love to put on a T-shirt for myself: “Psychologically, I’m very confused… But personally, I don’t feel bad at all.”

The movie was directed by Ernst Lubitsch who told a reporter from the New York Times: “It’s not a big picture, just a quiet little story that seemed to have some charm. It didn’t cost very much, for such a cast, under $500,000. It was made in twenty-eight days. I hope it has some charm.”

I would definitely say the movie has a lot of charm.

Next up for our movies is a double feature with Fantastic Mr. Fox and The Secret World of Arrietty (a Studio Ghibli film). Erin and I will share about them next week.

Erin’s impression of the movie is here: https://crackercrumblife.com/2023/09/07/comfy-cozy-cinema-the-shop-on-the-corner/

We plan to watch the following movies through the next three months (the dates are the dates that we will be writing about them on.

The Secret World of Arrietty and Fantastic Mr. Fox (September 14)

The African Queen (Sept. 21)

Arsenic and Old Lace (Sept. 28)

Oct. 5 (break for us or you to catch up!)

The Lady Vanishes (October 13)

Strangers on a Train (Oct. 19)

Rebecca (Oct. 26)

Little Women (November 2)

Tea with The Dames (November 9)

The Fishermen’s Friends (November 16)

November 23 off for Thanksgiving

November 30^th? Wildcard at this point because we shifted things around and are short a movie! Oops! We will update