The Shop Around The Corner

This film was made by Ernst Lubitsch in 1940. It stars Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart. It is the film that made me understand how good James Stewart could be - with incredible charm, a gift for delivering lines and allowing mixed emotions to pass across his face. The film is adapted from a Romanian play and it concerns the goings-on in a shop, and particularly the conflict and romance between the shop's longest-standing and most senior employee, Stewart, and a new employee, Sullavan.

The film shows in bucket-loads the Lubitsch 'touch' - felicitous camera movements and humour which is light, efective and does not pall or condescend. The cinema was almost full and there was much laughter from the audience. I saw it with a large group and it produced a smile on nearly eveyone's face, and I heard no negative remarks about it.