The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

In pre-WWII Budapest Mr. Hugo Matuschek (Frank Morgan), a seemingly struggling leather goods shop owner, begins to experience some friction with Alfred Kralik (James Stewart) his senior salesman, which results in the out-of-spite hiring of Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) a superfluous salesgirl the shop can't really afford, which only ends up adding more friction on the sales floor.

A classic Ernst Lubitsch romantic comedy which took some effort to buy as set in Europe considering its American cast and the fact that we had seen the You've Got Mail (1998) modern remake first and somewhat recently at the time.

For example, for all the mention of amounts of money it's difficult to get a grasp on how they would translate to current day dollars; not that this issue is a big deal, but a point is made that the shop is middle-class and not luxury minded.

Knowing what to expect, and with a couple of decades in between screenings it was now effortless to accept the European setting.

Funny, tragic, and tender, the film tells the stories of the various ups and downs and goings on in and around the titular shop with the many conflicts between these two main characters; Pepi Katona (William Tracy) a young ambitious errand boy; Pirovitch (Felix Bressart) the older, married character with children (who, in very funny scenes, can't afford to disagree with the boss); Ferencz Vadas (Joseph Schildkraut) the fop whose source of alternate income goes unexplained at least for a while; and the boss himself who for reason which will become clear comes to distrust the only employee who has the strength of character to disagree with him.

The drama comes to a head on a big Christmas Eve day of sales on which they will try and recover from lagging sales, making this not quite a holiday movie but easily passing for one.

Added poignancy is the historic pre-war setting which casts doubt on the future of one and all of the characters.