Rating: NR
Genre:
Comedy
Release Date: 10/01/2002
SubTitles: English/French/Espanol
Dubbed: English/French
Sound: DD1
Run Time: 99 Minutes
Flags: Adult Situations
Distributor/Studio: Warner Home Video
The Shop Around the Corner is adapted from the Hungarian play by
Nikolaus (Miklos) Laszlo. Budapest gift-shop clerk
Alfred Kralik (
James Stewart) and newly hired shopgirl
Klara Novak (
Margaret Sullavan) hate each other almost at first sight.
Kralik would prefer the company of the woman with whom he is corresponding by mail but has never met.
Novak likewise carries a torch for her male pen pal, whom she also has never laid eyes on. It doesn't take a PhD degree to figure out that
Kralik and
Novak have been writing letters to each other. The film's many subplots are carried by
Frank Morgan as the kindhearted shopkeeper and by
Joseph Schildkraut as a backstabbing employee whose comeuppance is sure to result in spontaneous applause from the audience. Directed with comic delicacy by
Ernst Lubitsch, this was later remade in 1949 as
In the Good Old Summertime, and in 1998 as
You've Got Mail. It was also musicalized as the 1963 Broadway production
She Loves Me.
~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide