Welcome to "Saturday Night at the Movies."

I'm your host, Glenn Holland.

This week's film is "The Shop Around the Corner," directed by Ernst Lubitsch for MGM Studios and released in 1940.

"The Shop Around the Corner" stars Margaret Sullavan, James Stewart, and Frank Morgan, with Joseph Schildkraut, Sara Haden, Felix Bressart, William Tracy, and Inez Courtney.

The film begins with a title card: This is the story of Matuschek and Company, of Mr. Matuschek and the people who work for him.

It is just around the corner from Andrassy Street, on Balta Street in Budapest, Hungary.

Before opening time, the six employees of the leather goods shop Matuschek and Company gather in front of the store and talk together.

They are Alfred Kralik, the longest-serving clerk and the shop's best salesman, his friend Pirovitch, a kindly family man, saleswoman Ilona Novotny, two-faced womanizer veteran Ferencz Vadas, clerk Flora Kaczek, and Pepi Katona, the brash and ambitious errand boy.

Kralik reveals to Pirovitch that he has begun corresponding anonymously by mail with a cultured young woman after seeing an advertisement she had placed in the newspaper.

After Mr. Matuschek arrives to open the store, he asks Kralik's opinion on a consignment of novelty cigarette boxes he's considering for sale in the shop.

When opened, they play the Russian folk tune "Ochi Chyornye".

But Kralik says he doesn't care for them.

Matuschek becomes angry with him.

Just then, a young woman, Klara Novak, enters the shop looking for a job.

Both Kralik and Matuschek insist no positions are open.

But when Klara manages to sell one of the cigarette boxes to a lady customer as a candy box, she is hired.

Some six months later, life at the shop seems to be much the same as usual, but there are changes.

Matuschek is having trouble with his wife and seems increasingly angry with the puzzled Kralik.

Vadas shows off ostentatious gifts he strongly implies have come from a wealthy lady friend.

Klara and Kralik are constantly in odds, and Kralik has become more and more infatuated with his anonymous female correspondent.

As Christmas approaches, the pace at Matuschek and Company increases as matters come to a head for the staff at "The Shop Around the Corner".

The screenplay for "The Shop Around the Corner" was written by Samson Raphaelson and Ben Hecht, adapted from the play "Illatszertár", by Hungarian writer Niklos Laszlo.

Born Nicholaus Leitner into a Jewish family of German background that was involved in the entertainment business.

As a young man, Laszlo wrote one-act plays for cabarets and theaters in Budapest.

After his father died and left him as the family's sole source of financial support, Laszlo worked in a series of low-paying jobs until his three-act play, "The Happiest Man", won the Hungarian Royal Academy Award for literature, the equivalent of a Pulitzer Prize when he was only 31 years old.

But his most successful play was "Illatszertár" a title usually translated as "Parfumerie", about the employees of a perfume shop, first produced The Peche Theater in Budapest in 1937.

The following year, recognizing the threat posed to European Jews by Nazi Germany.

Laszlo emigrated to the United States.

The story of "Parfumerie" appealed to director Ernst Lubich who had worked in his father Simon's Berlin tailor shop as a young boy.

At the film's premier at Radio City Music Hall in January, 1940, Lubich remarked, "I have known just such a little shop in Budapest."

The feeling between the boss and those who worked for him is pretty much the same the world over, it seems to me.

Everyone is afraid of losing his job and everyone knows how little human worries can affect his job.

If the boss has a touch of dyspepsia, better be careful not to step on his toes.

When things have gone well with him, the whole staff reflects his good humor.

The centrality of the boss comes across clearly in "The Shop Around the Corner".

His name Matuschek, is spoken 149 times over the film's 99 minutes, most often in the sentence, "Yes, Mr.

Matuschek."

At its release, Ernst Lubich told the New York Sun, "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 28 days.

I hope it has some charm.

If the story of "The Shop Around the Corner" seems familiar to you, it's because it's been adapted several times.

In 1949, MGM released a musical version, "In the Good Old Summertime", starring Judy Garland and Van Johnson.

In 1963, a stage musical, "She Loves Me", debuted on Broadway and was revived in 1993 and 2016.

In 1998, Nora Efron directed an updated email version with Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, "You've Got Mail".

These later productions tended to focus on the central love story and neglected what the original film called "The Story of Matuschek and Company" in all its complexity.

director Ernst Lubich became famous for what came to be called the Lubich Touch.

Many of his films were either historical dramas or sophisticated comedies, far removed from the world and the worries of his audiences.

But this was definitely not the case With "The Shop Around the Corner".

Lubich went to great lengths to strip away any hints of the glamour that usually characterized his movies.

When Margaret Sullavan bought a dress for Klara off the rack for a $1.98, he insisted the dress be left in the sun to bleach and altered to fit her poorly.

The movie is set in an ordinary place, a leather goods shop on Balta Street in Budapest and the people who populate it are all of them ordinary people concerned with the business of ordinary life.

Matuschek plays the benevolent employer but gets irritable when he feels he's being disrespected.

Pirovitch tries to keep his head down and hides whenever Matuschek asks someone for an honest opinion.

Both Ilona and Flora live quietly with their families when not at work.

Among the shop's employees Vadas and Pepi are set apart by their elan, their ambition and their interest in women.

Kralik and Klara try to escape the ordinary nature of their lives by unknowingly writing letters to one another.

Letters that discuss literature, philosophy, and all of what they consider to be the finer things of life.

But the facades the three main characters maintain are very fragile.

When Matuschek not only learns that his wife is carrying on an affair and spending his money on her lover but also realizes he is wrongly suspected and dismissed a man almost like a son to him, his life crumbles and he attempts suicide.

When Klara goes to her mailbox after her failed rendezvous with her mysterious correspondent and finds the mailbox empty, her illusions momentarily collapse.

Film historian David Thompson wrote, "The shot of Sullavan's gloved hand and then her ruined face, searching an empty mailbox for a letter is one of the most fragile moments in film."

For an instant, the ravishing Sullavan looks old and Ill, touched by loss.

When Kralik, who has discovered that Klara is his dear friend, attempts to break through her hostility of the cafe.

He says, "You may have very beautiful thoughts, but as far as your actions are concerned, you're cold and snippy, like an old maid."

Indignant, she puts him in his place.

"Ha, I have to laugh when I think of you calling me an old maid.

You, you little insignificant clerk."

It's a painful scene to watch because both Kralik and Klara are suddenly stripped in each other's eyes of all their pretensions and they're exposed in their everyday reality or what their everyday reality might soon prove to be.

But fortunately, that is not the end of the story.

After his breakdown, Mr. Matuschek comes to realize that in fact, it is Matuschek and Company that gives his life meaning and its employees are his family.

Klara recognizes that Kralik, despite his unpretentious place in life is still the same man who wrote for her those wonderful letters, even if he did steal some of his fine words from Shakespeare.

Kralik finally realizes that Klara, despite being psychologically all mixed up is more worth his love than the fantasy woman he addressed in his letters.

And for the audience, it is all immensely satisfying.

David Thompson calls "The Shop Around the Corner" among the greatest of all films.

This is a love story about a couple too much in love with love to fall tidily into one another's arms.

Though it all works out, finally a mystery is left, plus the fear of how easily good people can miss their chances.

The movie is a treasury of hopes and anxieties based in the desperate faces of Stewart and Sullavan.

It is a comedy so good, it frightens us for them.

Or as Ernst Lubich, a man who directed 75 movies, put it more simply, "The Shop Around the Corner" is the best picture I ever made in my life.

Please join us again next time for another "Saturday Night at the Movies."

I'm Glenn Holland.

Goodnight.

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