• Obchod na korze (The Shop on Main Street)

5/9/21 (Sun)

I was browsing through Criterion’s selection of Best Foreign Language Oscar winners and chose this 1965 Czechoslovakian film by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos without knowing much about it. It turned out to be a Holocaust comedy, not a crowded category, set in 1942 in the newly created Nazi puppet state of Slovakia. The Tiso regime has accepted the Nuremberg Race Laws, setting off the conflict that drives the drama.

Tóno is a simple struggling carpenter with a wife and no children. He is quiet and apolitical, but soon learns that the world doesn’t work like that. His hated brother-in-law has become a powerful bigwig in town and gets him appointed as the Aryan head of a large shop, where he will replace the Jewish owner. Tóno’s wife is ecstatic at the financial and social promise this brings (“If we don’t get rich now, we never will. It’s our duty to God and the Fuhrer!”), and Tóno reluctantly accepts. He discovers that the shop, which sells buttons, has long seen better days – the good shops have already been handed out – while the old proprietress is half-deaf and secretly being kept afloat by the Jewish community. Tóno tries showing her the document assigning him the shop (“I’m your Aryan and you are my Jewess”) but is unable to communicate to the befuddled old woman what is going on. The community offers him a nice monthly salary to pretend to be the old lady’s assistant, keeping them both happy. Ever the carpenter, he takes an interest in fixing her aging furniture, so it works out well at first. When Tóno’s wife comes around and peeks into the shop, he barks out orders and runs around in a comical attempt to make her think he’s running the show.

However, the situation gradually grows ominous. Reports of arriving cattle cars mix with warnings not to become too friendly with the Jews (“A Jew lover is worse than a regular Jew”), and a portentous nationalistic monument is being constructed in view of the shop. We start noticing the yellow stars that the Jews are being forced to wear. The man who initially helped guide Tóno in the shop is shown brutally beaten and forced to wear a sign, “I love Jews”. Soon come the orders that all Jews are being transferred to work camps and must report to authorities immediately. Tóno’s Jewish barber dismisses Tóno’s surprise at the turn of events, saying as he packs his life into a small bag, “I am not wise, and this is not sudden.”

Tóno becomes frightened for the woman in his care, who has no idea of what’s happening in the town. They have providentially skipped her name in the roll call, which could be a simple mistake or his brother-in-law’s doing – but Tóno is taking no chances. When she wants to close the shop for Sabbath, he is afraid to draw attention to her and violently tries to keep her from the window as the authorities pass. As they quarrel, he realizes suddenly that he could be held responsible if he does not turn her in, and in his madness, his heart turns against her. She becomes frightened, thinking that he is aiding in a pogrom (“Am I going mad or has the world gone mad?”). Events move swiftly from there to an ironic and heartbreaking climax. There is a curious fantasy coda in which Tóno and the old lady come dancing out in formal clothing, but that seems a copout after the utterly shocking real ending.

This spectacular film deftly walks the thin line between comedy and tragedy until the devastating turn to the latter at the film’s end. It works as a Holocaust film because it concentrates on the motivations of real characters, especially Tóno’s sharp moral dilemma, in the face of the inevitable, inexorable takeover of evil. The terrific screenplay was by the directors and the original novelist Ladislav Grosman.

The deaf-old-lady humor at the start was not a good sign, but it worked thanks to the flawless performance of Ida Kamińska, a famed Polish/Yiddish actress. Her age-related confusion, deafness, constant misunderstandings (such as mistaking Tóno’s fervent pleas for her to hide as his reaction to a fight with his wife) and such could easily have been overplayed but came out as perfectly natural in her hands. Her religious commitment was as beautifully conveyed as the humor. She is the key to the film.

Jozef Kroner is also very fine as Tóno with an unaffected performance that heightened the intense psychological pressure he came under. The best of the great supporting cast were Hana Slivková (the wife), Martin Gregor (wonderful as the barber) and Martin Hollý (the resistance member who helps Tóno with the Jews and later pays for it). Others in the cast were evidently not pros, and that shows in a very good way. The town felt chillingly real. An indispensable film.