Oscar - Best Foreign Film 1965
Since this weekend is the Academy Awards in the US, I thought I’d make mention of the Slovak film that won the Oscar for best foreign film in 1965 – Obchod na korze – The Shop on Main Street.
Though I say it is a “Slovak” film, I mean that the film was produced by a Czechoslovak film studio, but the film takes place in Slovakia, the movie is in Slovak, and stars Jozef Króner, one of Slovakia’s most famous and important actors.
The film takes place in a small town in fascist Slovakia, in 1942. Króner plays the character of Tono, a simple carpenter who lives with his pushy, ambitious wife. Tono’s brother-in-law Markus is the local fascist leader and one of his main goals is to remove Jewishness from the town (and ultimately the Jews themselves). Markus appoints Tono as the “Aryan overseer” of a button shop on the main street, which belongs to the elderly Jewish Mrs. Lautmannova. Mrs. Lautmannova doesn’t hear or see well, and doesn’t understand Tono when he tells her that he’s taking over her shop. Instead she thinks that he has come to be her assistant. He can’t make her understand and, through an arrangement with the Jewish community who support Mrs. Lautmannova, he does become her assistant of sorts.
Over the time he spends with her he becomes quite fond of her. As time goes on, Tono is stuck between needing to be visible as the new shop owner to please the fascists, to allow Mrs. Lautmannova to remain as she is, and his greedy, ambitious wife. Of course the bigger picture is that he is a decent person who is stuck in terrible circumstances during a terrible time. He doesn’t really understand what is going on around him at times and seems lost by all the ugliness.
In a blog by teacher of Eastern European film, Steven Shaviro, he talks about the message of the film:
His [Tono’s] good heart and good intentions are simply not enough, when arrayed against the monstrous forces of Fascism and Nazism. (The same could apply to Stalinism, or Maoism, or American slavery, or the many other horrors of the last several hundred years). The Shop on Main Street reminds us — and this is a reminder that Americans seem to need, more than Europeans — that a good conscience, and a basic human decency, are not enough to save us. Human beings indeed “make their own history, but –” as Marx goes on to say, “they do not make it just as they please.”
The movie ends with a dream-like sequence of Tono and Mrs. Lautmannova dancing on main street together, both dressed in their finest clothes. Though is only a fantasy, the scene creates a sense of peace for the troubled Tono.
