Themes: Unlikely Friendships, Life Under Occupation, Crimes Against Humanity
Main Cast: Josef Kroner, Frantisek Zvarik, Ida Kaminska, Hana Slivkova, Martin Holly
Release Year: 1965
Country: CS
Run Time: 111 minutes
Plot
The 1965 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, The Shop on Main Street (Obch o Na Korze) stars Josef Kroner as Tono Briko, a slothful Slovakian carpenter. The time is World War II, and the occupying Nazis are nationalizing all Jewish-owned businesses. To please his ambitious family, Tono takes the job of "Aryan comptroller" for a rundown button shop managed by an elderly Jewish woman (Ida Kaminska). He realizes that his new job won't bring much in the way of money; the old woman, deaf as a post, realizes nothing, not even that a war is on. The shopkeeper's Jewish friends, knowing that the woman will be carted off for extermination if she doesn't have an Aryan coworker, offer to pay Tono if he'll stay on as her assistant. Kroner and the old woman form a friendship, but when the order goes out that all Jews be rounded up, he panics and prepares to turn her over to the Nazis. His last-minute change of heart unfortunately comes too late. In contrast to the tragic denouement of the film, Shop on Main Street closes on a idyllic, dreamlike sequence, showing the smiling shopkeeper and clerk walking together through the countryside, free from all danger and fear. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Review
On its initial release, The Shop on Main Street contained several ingredients that would make it an instant classic: it was a heartfelt drama about the effect of the Holocaust on two humble individuals, and a film made by individuals who were dealing with a totalitarian regime of their own. The film can't help but be affecting, but it has lost some of its luster with the subsequent release of more complex studies of some of the same issues, namely Lacombe, Lucien, The Conformist, and Divided We Fall. And at 125 minutes, this simple story of a peasant who comes to understand belatedly the complicity he shares in the persecution of the Jews in his village, seems over-extended. Tono's fretting in the button shop as the roll of names is called in the town square outside seems to go on forever, and there's a crucial dramatic inconsistency: He should feel relieved when the name of his elderly friend, Rosalie Lautmann, isn't called. However, the film shouldn't be casually dismissed; both lead performers are superb, especially Ida Kaminska as Rosalie, and there is one bravura piece of camerawork, when Tono retreats to the back rooms of the shop and the camera prowls around each room until it "finds" him and he bolts to another room, where the process is repeated. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
Helena Zvarikova - Rose Kolkocka; Martin Gregory - Katz; Mikulas Ladizinsky - Marian Peter; Adam Matejka - Piti Baci; Gita Misurova - Andoricova; Frantisek Papp - Andoric; Eugen Senaj - Blau; Tibor Vadas - Tobacconist; Elmar Klos
Credit
Karel Skvor - Art Director, Ján Kadár - Director, Elmar Klos - Director, Jaromir Janacek - Editor, Diana Heringova - Editor, Zdenek Liska - Composer (Music Score), Vladimir Novotny - Cinematographer, Ladislav Hanus - Production Manager, Ladislav Hanus - Producer, Jaromir Lukas - Producer, Jordan Balurov - Producer, Ján Kadár - Screenwriter, Elmar Klos - Screenwriter, Ladilsav Grossman - Screenwriter, Ladislav Grosman - Short Story Author
During World War II, a mild-mannered Slovak carpenter Tono Brtko (Jozef Kroner) is offered the chance to take over the sewing notions store of an old, near-deaf Jewish woman Rozália Lautmannová (Ida Kamińska) as a part of the enactment of an Aryanization regulation in the town. As Tono attempts to explain to Mrs. Lautmannová, who is oblivious of the world outside and generally confused, that he has come to be her supervisor and owner of the store, Imrich Kuchár (Martin Hollý, Sr.), a Slovak opponent of Aryanization, steps in and reveals to Brtko that the business itself is less than profitable, as Lautmannová herself relies on donations. The Jewish community then offers the amiable Brtko a weekly payment if he does not give up the store, which would otherwise be given to a new, possibly ruthless Aryanizer. Tono accepts and lets Mrs. Lautmannová believe he is her nephew who has come to help in the store. Their relationship grows, until the authorities round up the town's entire Jewish population for transport, and Tono finds himself conflicted as to whether he should turn in the senile Mrs. Lautmannová, or hide her. When the woman finally becomes aware of the "pogrom" all around her, she panics, and in attempting to silence her, Tono accidentally kills her. The realization devastates him, and he hangs himself.
Screenplay
The screenplay had a bilingual Czech−Slovak history. The screenwriter Ladislav Grosman (1921-1981) was born and grew up in Slovakia. He became proficient in Czech after he moved to Czechoslovakia'sCzech-speaking part in his late twenties, where he worked as a correspondent and editor in the Prague Bureau of the Slovak newspaper Pravda[5] published in Bratislava, and later in the Slovak Book bookstore[6] in Prague. Grosman published his precursor to the screenplay, the short story "The Trap" (Past), in Czech in 1962.[7] Only three of its themes made it into the film. He subsequently reworked and expanded it, still in Czech, as a literary-narrative screenplay published in 1964 under the title "The Shop on Main Street" (Obchod na korze),[8] which already contained the film's storyline, although not in the usual (American) screenplay format.[9] He then reworked it into a shooting script with Slovak dialogues in cooperation with the film's designated directors Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos. The only other language in the film is Yiddish (sometimes misidentified as German) limited to several lines that Mrs. Lautmannová mutters to herself. Her Hebrew reading from the siddur is indistinct.
