Why The Shop Around the Cor­ner is a true Christ­mas miracle

No image cap­tures what we mean when we talk about ​‘Christ­mas spir­it’ bet­ter than that of George Bai­ley at the end of It’s a Won­der­ful Life, hold­ing his wife in one arm and his child in the oth­er, stunned into bliss­ful silence after the kind­ness of his neigh­bours has saved him from ruin. It is an image of famil­ial har­mo­ny and belief in the good­will of peo­ple, and one that might have descend­ed into cloy­ing sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty were it not for the nat­ur­al genius of James Stew­art and his boy­ish charis­ma and pathos. Alfred Hitch­cock brought out the actor’s dark­er side in Rear Win­dow and Ver­ti­go, and Antho­ny Mann a macho ele­ment in their west­erns togeth­er, but it’s this kind of love­able lit­tle guy with an aw-shucks com­mon decen­cy that sees Stew­art at his best and most suit­able for fes­tive fam­i­ly viewing.

It is cer­tain­ly the most famous, but It’s A Won­der­ful Life was not the only Christ­mas-themed clas­sic Stew­art starred in. In Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Cor­ner, released sev­en years ear­li­er, he plays Alfred Kra­lik, a clerk work­ing at a small leather-goods shop in Budapest. Like George Bai­ley, Alfred is dri­ven by a youth­ful ambi­tion to aspire for more out of life, and is excit­ed when he starts exchang­ing mes­sages with an unknown girl who he believes to be a kin­dred spir­it that shares his aspi­ra­tions towards the intel­lec­tu­al and poet­ic view of the world. Lit­tle does he know, how­ev­er, that the recip­i­ent of his mes­sages is Klara Novak (Mar­garet Sul­li­van), his col­league at the shop with whom he is per­pet­u­al­ly bick­er­ing with.

The set-up is is fer­tile ground for both romance and com­e­dy, and there are indeed plen­ty of great one-lin­ers and grace­ful moments of humour (“If you don’t like Miss Novak, I can tell you right now you won’t like that girl,” informs one sup­port­ing char­ac­ter to Alfred upon dis­cov­er­ing his correspondent’s iden­ti­ty – ​“Why?” ​“Because it is Miss Novak”). The core of the film isn’t so much their romance, how­ev­er, but the small com­mu­ni­ty of work­ers at the shop. Released in 1940 at the tail end of the Great Depres­sion, Lubitsch depicts a strug­gling land­scape, and the shop is toil­ing for busi­ness. Yet, notwith­stand­ing the occa­sion­al argu­ment, every­one gets along well and cares about each oth­er, from well-mean­ing boss Mr Matuschek (Frank Mor­gan) to cheeky young errand boy Pepi (William Tra­cy) and kind­ly old con­fi­dante Pirovich (Felix Bressart).

The film’s title sug­gests a set­ting that could be with­in touch­ing dis­tance of any neigh­bour­hood, and the shop has a cosy feel com­pa­ra­ble to the small town of Bed­ford Falls in It’s a Won­der­ful Life. Almost all the film is con­fined to either inside the shop or on the quaint street just out­side of it, and Lubitsch rein­forces the sense of inti­ma­cy be shoot­ing many scenes as just two char­ac­ters framed in mid-shots sim­ply talk­ing togeth­er. And in these many inter­ac­tions he applies the famous ​‘Lubitsch touch’, a style of com­e­dy not as uproar­i­ous­ly fun­ny as the con­tem­po­rary fast-talk­ing screw­balls, but sub­tly grace­ful and exud­ing warmth and compassion.

Anoth­er sim­i­lar­i­ty with It’s a Won­der­ful Life is the way the char­ac­ters first must endure hard­ship before being redeemed at Christ­mas. Alfred is dis­ap­point­ed to find his ide­alised girl is in fact Clara (it’s tes­ta­ment to James Stewart’s tal­ent that he can say some pret­ty mean things to Clara yet remain so like­able – per­haps because when she returns the insults, at one point dis­miss­ing him as a ​‘lit­tle insignif­i­cant clerk’, he has the look of a pup­py told off by its own­er). Then the office har­mo­ny is dis­rupt­ed when Mr Matuschek mys­te­ri­ous­ly turns cold towards Alfred and sacks him. It’s lat­er revealed that Matuschek has mis­tak­en­ly believed Alfred to be hav­ing an affair with wife, and, upon real­is­ing that it was instead anoth­er of his employ­ees, the syco­phan­tic, two-faced Vadas (Joseph Schild­kraut), he unsuc­cess­ful­ly attempts suicide.

But with christ­mas eve comes redemp­tion. Matuschek returns to work to find busi­ness boom­ing, in what is a cel­e­bra­tion of the less ide­alised yet per­haps just as per­ti­nent Christ­mas tra­di­tion of buy­ing and sell­ing stuff. And Alfred and Clara end up togeth­er, learn­ing to aban­don the ide­alised ver­sions of each oth­er they’d both con­struct­ed, and instead embrac­ing the flawed real thing.

But again, the most affect­ing moments in the Christ­mas Eve-set final act involve the shop as a com­mu­ni­ty. Alfred pass­ing­ly refers to them as ​‘our lit­tle fam­i­ly’ ear­li­er in the film, and that notion is rein­forced when, in an emo­tion­al mono­logue, and while crammed into the frame with all his employ­ees, Matuschek comes to terms with his wife’s adul­tery and declares that ​“this is my home” before hand­ing them all gen­er­ous bonus­es. As each of them files out to go home to their fam­i­lies he con­tem­plates what looks set to be a lone­ly night, only to dis­cov­er that the new errand boy also has no-one to cel­e­brate Christ­mas with, and the two arrange to have a feast togeth­er in what is an unlike­ly and dis­arm­ing­ly touch­ing cli­max. The final scene of It’s a Won­der­ful Life may end with a lit­er­al fam­i­ly, but Christ­mas is just as much about arti­fi­cial one born out of the work­place in The Shop Around the Corner.