The Shop Around the Corner

This is so warm, gentle, touching, and funny that it almost feels like it comes from a different filmmaker who made the much bawdier early sound films like The Smiling Lieutenant and The Merry Widow. It took a couple of films, but with both Ninotchka and The Shop Around the Corner, Ernst Lubitsch figured out how he was going to make moves when needing to submit them for approval from the Hays Office. What he came up with was his style and thematic focus at their most elegant and subtle. In a...