NR | 1 h 39 min | Romance, Drama, Comedy | 1940
Alfred Kralik (James Stewart) and Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) are co-workers at Mr. Matuschek’s (Frank Morgan) leather goods retail store in Budapest, Hungary. The story revolves around the lives of those who work there, and these two employees find their lives especially entwined. Yet what Kralik and Novak see in each other at their workplace repels.
In a time before dating apps, anonymous lonely-hearts letters served the same purpose. What these two read of each other’s mind through these exchanges attracts, except—neither knows that the person they’re in love with (the person they are writing to) is someone they already know. Now, they’re about to find out but, exasperatingly, one at a time.
Matuschek, the wealthy and influential owner of the shop, hosts regular parties for the town’s well-heeled and is wedded more to cash registers and customers than to his wife; she ends up having an affair with one of his staffers. Neither wealthy nor influential, his other staff rush home each evening to cherish time with their husbands, wives, parents, and children. To them, work is an inescapable distraction; family is the main event.
Born in Germany, director Ernst Lubitsch refuses to let unfolding war horrors at the time of filming color his story. Instead, he imbues it with a bittersweet charm, drawing on boyhood memories of working in his father’s tailor shop in Berlin to make his store sequences authentic.
Pepi Katona (William Tracy), the shop’s errand boy, is no mere spectator to what happens in and out of the store. Pirovitch (Felix Bressart), an aged clerk, is a sensible and sensitive sounding board to both lovebirds, Klara and Kralik.
Learning to See
The film’s opening scene seems trivial. It isn’t.Pepi is teasing Pirovitch for showing up early at the store each day when there’s no one to impress, not even the boss. Pepi philosophizes: “What for and why? Who sees you? Me. And who sees me? You. What does it get us? Can we give each other a raise? No.”
This seemingly cynical throwaway turns out to be one of Lubitsch’s subtle themes. Sometimes it’s only through silence and by looking with our inner eyes that we can avoid ascribing motives to others or projecting ours onto them.
Sure enough, talky scenes hide telltale silences. In a cafe, Novak muddles past Kralik’s half-hearted, clumsy attempt to reach out to her. It’s a charged scene, packed with breathless dialogue, until he’s forced into stunned silence at her seemingly irredeemable impression of him.
Lubitsch is saying that some of us like to convince others that we’re more than we are, because we feel less than we are; we pretend to be more scholarly, more sophisticated than we are. But in racing to impress—even with our passing looks, likes, dislikes, or social status—we’re rarely ourselves.
As Novak and Kralik discover, what draws the special people in our lives toward us isn’t what we think makes us unique but what makes us unique: our ideas, our questions, our answers, our values, how we treat someone sick or lonely, someone else finding or losing a job, getting a raise or a promotion.
Of course, retail is about style over substance, triggering impulse (or repeat) purchases. Stores like Matuschek & Co. do this through manipulative window dressing, seasonal pricing (and repricing). Lubitsch is saying that love must be treasured not trivialized; we aren’t commodities to be bought and sold at seasonal discounts. Relationships aren’t like product placements. Love isn’t about being in the right place at the right time or saying the right things but about being true to ourselves and others.
In a prescient, albeit oblique, critique of hookup culture and one-night stands, the film portrays a man and woman waiting for, rather than rushing into, a relationship. Gently and amusingly, Lubitsch suggests that fairy-tale matches, wherein couples live “happily ever after,” are usually made by ordinary people first setting and then meeting extraordinary standards of love.
