The Shop on Main Street

The Shop on Main Street
Film poster
Directed by	Ján Kadár Elmar Klos
Written by	Novel: Ladislav Grosman Screenplay: Ladislav Grosman Ján Kadár Elmar Klos
Starring	Ida Kamińska Jozef Kroner Hana Slivková Martin Hollý, Sr. František Zvarík Martin Gregor
Music by	Zdeněk Liška
Cinematography	Vladimír Novotný
Edited by	Diana Heringová Jaromír Janáček
Release dates	8 October 1965 (1965-10-08)
Running time	125 minutes
Country	Czechoslovakia
Language	Slovak Yiddish
Box office	$1,450,000 (US/ Canada)[1]

The Shop on Main Street (Czech/Slovak: Obchod na korze; in the UK A Shop on the High Street) is a 1965 Czechoslovak film^[2] about the Aryanization programme during World War II in the Slovak State.^[3]

The film was written by Ladislav Grosman and directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos. It was funded by Czechoslovakia's central authorities (as were all films under the Communist regime), produced at the Barrandov Film Studio in Prague, and filmed with a Slovak cast on location at the town of Sabinov in north-eastern Slovakia and on the Barrandov sound stage. It stars Jozef Kroner as carpenter Tóno Brtko and Polish actress Ida Kamińska as the Jewish widow Rozália Lautmannová.^[4]

The film won the 1965 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film,^[5] and Kamińska was nominated in 1966 for Best Actress in a Leading Role. The film was also entered into the 1965 Cannes Film Festival.^[6]

Plot

During World War II, a mild-mannered Slovak carpenter Anton "Tóno" 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 Tóno 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. Tóno 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 Tóno 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, Tóno 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. 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.

Cast

The Shop on Main Street was filmed on location at the town of Sabinov in north-eastern Slovakia with numerous local extras whose voices bring in hints of the eastern regional variety of Slovak. Ida Kamińska's Polish accent is employed to the same effect.

See also

• List of submissions to the 38th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film
• List of Czechoslovakia submissions for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film

References

External links

• Ján Kadár, "Not the Six Million but the One."
• Steven Banovac, "Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos: The Shop on Main Street (Obchod na korze) 1965."
• Václav Macek, "From Czechoslovak to Slovak and Czech Film."
• Martin Votruba, "Historical and Cultural Background of Slovak Filmmaking."
• The Shop on Main Street at the Internet Movie Database
• The Shop on Main Street at the TCM Movie Database
• The Shop on Main Street at AllMovie