Well, I’m presently speechless, having just finished watching for the first time the 1965 Academy Award winning film in the Best Foreign Film category: The Shop on Main Street (or Obchod na korze). This is a Czech film, co-directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos and based on a story by Ladislav Grosman. This film accomplishes the near impossible – dealing with an aspect of the holocaust in a credible and meaningful way. This is accomplished by the device of reducing the scope of history’s most unthinkable and incomprehensible event down to its influence on two main characters.

The story focuses on a listless, Aryan Czech national of limited intellectual and moral sophistication and an elderly Jewish widow during the time of Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1942. The man is Tony Brtko (Jozef Kroner), an unambitious carpenter, who is continuously nagged by his wife. The wife’s sister is married to a local Nazi party official, who is aggressive and fully inculcated with the Nazi mentality. Tony dislikes the occupiers and his brother-in-law in particular, but is otherwise largely disinterested in political happenings. His circle of acquaintances include Jews and non-Jews alike.

The Nazis have taken control of Jewish businesses and placed an Aryan controller in charge of each. Tony’s Nazi brother-in-law offers Tony control of one such shop, although, as it turns out, it is a button shop that is almost devoid of inventory and does no significant amount of business. The shop is owned and operated by a Jewish widow, Mrs. Lautmann (Ida Kaminska), who is deaf and partly senile. Mrs. Lautmann’s senility gives her a child-like innocence and she is entirely oblivious to the on-going war and Nazi occupation. This plot device creates a penetrating method of sharply revealing the unthinkable quality of the gathering holocaust. While others in the village have been drawn into stepwise acceptance of the events by the insidious way in which the events progressed, Mrs. Lautmann’s frame of reference remains as it was before any of it began – right where everyone’s frame of reference ought to have been in a sane world. We get the full contrast between her simple, unspoiled view of life and the escalating craziness of the world all around her.

Tony shows up at the shop with the letter that appoints him as Aryan controller, but finds that Mrs. Lautmann is entirely unable to comprehend such a change in her world order. She interprets his presence in her shop in the only way that makes sense to her – that he is the assistant that she’s wanted for some time. Tony also discovers that the shop is barren of income potential and that Mrs. Lautmann is, in fact, supported by the charity of the Jewish community. The Jewish leadership, recognizing that a controller is an inevitability under present circumstances, offers to pay Tony a salary as Aryan controller to watch over the shop and Mrs. Lautmann. Tony is thus able to duly impress his wife with the appearance of business acumen by bringing home income that significantly exceeds what he had been making as a carpenter. Mrs. Lautmann and Tony gradually develop something of a bond. She gives him some classy items of clothing that had belonged to her long-deceased husband and cooks for him; he uses his carpentry skills to fix up some of her old furniture and floors.

Soon, however, the Nazis are advancing their program of extermination into its next phase – the deportation of all the town’s Jews. Somehow, Mrs. Lautmann has been overlooked. Tony is disgusted by what he observes -- the gathering of all of the Jews in the town square, but fully understands that any Aryan found to be harboring a Jew or sympathizing will be beaten to death or shot. One of his friends has already perished in that manner. Since he is the shop’s controller, he will certainly be held responsible when she is inevitably found. Hiding her is a near impossibility given her total lack of comprehension of what is happening and her stubbornly independent nature. Tony is thus presented with a gut-wrenching moral dilemma: push her out the door into the clutches of the Nazis or condemn himself to inevitable death when she is later discovered. Obviously, Tony’s dilemma also represents the moral crisis encountered by millions of non-Jews throughout Europe faced with turning their heads as the Jews were deported or dying themselves in mostly futile resistance.

The Shop on Main Street has extraordinary cinematic qualities in several respects. The script is extremely tautly written. It maintains a perfect balance between the small, personalized story of Tony and Mrs. Lautmann and the monumental historical context. Not a moment or an episode in the film is superfluous, each frame adding to the story’s progression. The dialog always feels natural. There are two dream sequences in the film – one about midway and one as an epilogue. The final dream sequence has been sometimes criticized as a cop-out, given the dark subject matter of the entire film, but it does effectively ease one’s transition from the emotional impact of the film back to post-viewing reality. I felt that it being a dream-like sequence was adequate rationale for it momentarily depicting what life ought to have been for the protagonists rather than the reality of what it was in that time and place.

The black-and-white cinematography is highly effective. In one sequence, a partially intoxicated Tony looks through his shot glass at shimmering images of his wife, sister-in-law, and his Nazi brother-in-law. Another shot follows the strutting of an egret-like bird in a chimney nest, reminding one of goose-stepping Nazis. The acting is superlative in all of the roles, but especially the two leads. Ida Kaminska, in fact, received an Academy Award nomination as best actress, which is very rare for actresses in a foreign film. Although Jozef Kroner was not similarly honored, his work is no less special. The directing was strong and the message utterly powerful.

I make a point of never seeing holocaust films in a theater. I find many such films so disturbing, especially the first time through, that I need to be able to schedule my own breaks, which can be more easily accomplished at home by stopping the VCR for breathing time. I managed to get through this one with just one such break, though my recovery time at the end from the emotional power of the film was a solid hour or so. One of the stunning characteristics of The Shop of Main Street is that it integrates scenes of natural humor in a way that harmonize rather than creating discord with the film’s bleak subject matter. It shocks the senses to watch ordinary people in frivolity or in humorously awkward situations and then to see these same folks having to deal with ethical dilemmas of almost unfathomable existential magnitude. This film will definitely move somewhere into my top twenty list of foreign films.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Czechoslovakia:

Closely Watched Trains
Kolya

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older