Tag Archives: van johnson

Revisting The White Cliffs of Dover (don’t forget the tissues).

Posted on by under maudlin mondays, melodrama, sarah's faves

The White Cliffs of Dover is a 1944 film starring Irene Dunne and Alan Marshal. This film shares the story of the life of an American woman living in England during both World War I and World War II.

Filming this flick must have been quite a challenge for the beautiful and talented Dunne, who was also starring in A Guy Named Joe simultaneously (production on Joe had been delayed due to that film’s star, Van Johnson, being seriously injured in a car accident–funnily enough, he recovered in time to play a supporting role opposite Dunne in this film, too!). Nonetheless, Dunne’s performance is flawless. One can’t help loving with her and grieving with her as she undergoes life’s trials. The movie is the very definition of star-studded, featuring a healthy mix of stars young (Elizabeth Taylor, Peter Lawford, Roddy McDowell, June Lockhart) and not-so-young (Dame May Whitty, Frank Morgan, C. Aubrey Smith, Gladys Cooper). Although sneered at by some critics for its rather forced political theme, this film was well-received in both the United States and England. I watched this movie years ago, but found it was even more charming and moving upon this second viewing.

The film starts with Susan (Dunne), a WWII nurse, anxiously staring out into the night from a hospital window. A fellow nurse comes in to bring her a welcomed cup of tea.

Margaret: “Why don’t you take your cap off and lie down for awhile?”

Susan: “We were told to stand by. There must be some very good reason. It helps to be doing something.”

Margaret: “You’re worried?”

Susan: “Who isn’t, nowadays?”

Margaret: “I thought your son was to stay the week with you?”

Susan: “He called to say his leave had been cancelled. I haven’t heard anything since. It’s been five days now. I’m terribly worried.”

Margaret: “So when we were told to stand by for emergency, you made up your mind he’d be in the thick of it?”

Susan: “Yes, Margaret, I’m afraid I did.”

Margaret: “Well, you can be wrong, you know. I hope you are. Do try and rest.”

The hospital receives a message from the surgeon general that an expected 5,000 casualties will be arriving within 24 hours. Susan is terrified that her son will be among them. As she thinks about how this came to be, we are taken to a flashback of when Susan first came to England. As a young woman, she arrived on a boat from America with her ornery father, a newspaper man. Susan is obviously excited. She has never traveled before, and she is enthralled by the history that England offers. Hiram Dunn (Frank Morgan), Susan’s father, is a rather spirited (grumpy) man. He constantly complains about the rain and chill: “It’ll be like this the whole time we’re in England!” Unfortunately for him, he becomes ill for the entire two weeks that they are to stay in England. Susan is unable to see much of the country, but she is thrilled when she is invited to a ball on the last night of their stay. A friendly elderly man invites her to join him, and he even goes so far as to hunt for a young man for her to dance with. He makes a smashing choice in the dashing young Sir John Ashwood (Marshal). Sir John is immediately taken by Susan the moment he sees her. They spend the evening dancing and talking in the moonlight.

John begs her to stay in England for longer, but she tells him that she must return with her father. While Susan and her father are packing to leave, Sir John arrives at their boarding house to ask her father’s permission for Susan to stay behind. At first, her father is very protective and against the idea; however, John is extremely persuasive and persistent. Susan spends a week with Sir John and his aristocratic family. They take long walks in the gardens and spend time getting to know each other. One night, while Sir John is showing Susan the family portraits, he points out an open space for the portrait of his future wife.

Susan: “You must have often wondered what she’d be like.”

John: “Yes, I have, until a few days ago. Then, I began to hope she’d be tall and fair, with a mind of her own, and that when my great-grandson showed visitors her portrait, he’d say, ‘This is my great-grandmother. Lovely, isn’t she? She was an American.’”

Susan: “John …”

John: “You must’ve known. I’ve been out of my mind since I first saw you in the Adam Room. I meant to wait, give you more time, but it’s out now … Don’t say no, Sue. If you can’t give me the right answer, pretend I haven’t spoken.”

Susan: “May I do that John, for these few days? I don’t want to make decisions; I just want to live and be happy.”

John: “You are happy, Sue, happy here?”

Susan: “When we are together, yes, when we are alone.”

John: “What does that mean?”

Susan: “Please don’t ask me. It’s just that, it’s all so strange, this place, your family.”

Susan is correct in her perception of tension within the family. While Susan and John are quite busy falling in love, his family is not pleased with their courtship. Even though they are clearly aware that Susan and John are interested in each other, they speak openly in front of her of their wish for John and family friend Helen to marry. Susan feels this tension and lashes out against them. Her outburst seems to make them feel guilty and treat her kindly: “It’s a compliment not to be like an American? How insulting! … I came here loving England and all it meant to me. I was happy to come here, I was so sure I would like you all because of John. I hoped you would like me. But I was an outsider, I didn’t belong. You made that perfectly clear!”

Ahh, young love.

Although the family apologizes, Susan is utterly embarrassed at her outburst. She leaves a goodbye message for Sir John and leaves on the morning train. When she gets off the train to find her boat, she is surprised to find John waiting for her. She tries to argue with him that she should return to America, but once again, he is quite persistent. He talks her into marrying him, and they seem quite happy.

Unfortunately, the happiness is short-lived. On their honeymoon, they learn that England has gone to war. Because it is tradition in the Ashwood family that the males join the military, John learns that he must go to war, almost immediately. The couple is separated for three years while John fights in WWI with his regiment. Susan lives in a constant state of fear while John is away. She worries from day to day that he may never return. When she visits him in France, they stay at a hotel with a beautiful, quaint bandstand visible from their balcony overlooking the sea.

It is on this visit that she becomes pregnant with their son, whom they name John, even though it goes against the Ashwood family tradition of naming the first male Percy. Unfortunately, when baby John is only an infant, his father is killed in action. Susan is devastated, and ignores her mother-in-law who tries to convince her to go on with her life.

“Enough happiness to last us the rest of our lives …”

When young John grows a little older, Susan attempts to move with him back to America so that he will not go into England’s military as his father had done. She tells her mother-in-law that she will teach her son to run when he hears cannons so that he will not die as his father had. Young Sir John is much like his father, however, and persuades his mother to stay and allow him to continue the Ashwood family traditions. This scene is especially heartbreaking, as we know from the beginning of the film that he does end up in harm’s way as a soldier in WWII.

This film is heartbreaking. We watch as Susan grows from a carefree young woman in love to a grieving widow, scared of also losing her only son. This film is about family. It is about the most important parts of our lives, and it is about the tragedy of war and dying young. It brings out our greatest fears of losing those that we love the most.

 

The White Cliffs of Dover is definitely a five on the “Maudlin Meter” tear scale!

An Invitation to Despair

Posted on by under maudlin mondays, melodrama, sarah's faves

For this week’s entry in the Maudlin Mondays series, I chose to watch the 1952 film Invitation, mainly because of its star, Dorothy McGuire, who plays the role of Ellen Pierce. A few days ago, I watched The Enchanted Cottage, also starring McGuire.

In The Enchanted Cottage, she plays a kind, plain-looking young woman who falls in love; in Invitation, she also plays a kind, plain-looking young woman who falls in love. Attention, Hollywood filmmakers: if you would like an actress to be “plain-looking,” don’t hire a woman who looks like this:

I don’t mean to say that McGuire should not have received the role. She was perfect as an innocent and kind young woman, nearly driven to madness after learning that her father (Louis Calhern) paid a man to marry her.

At the beginning of the film, we learn that Ellen’s father is a very rich and generous man; a fur coat is delivered to Ellen, which she hangs it in the closet, alongside many other fur coats. Ellen is worried that her husband Dan (Van Johnson, a.k.a. “The Voiceless Sinatra”) will become irritated with her father’s generosity:

Ellen: “Oh, Dan, you really hate it, don’t you?”

Dan: ”It’s been so much: the house, the car, the china…”

Ellen: “I’ll talk to him about it.”

Dan: “No, don’t. After all, your father’s got a right to be as generous as he wants.”

Ellen: “You see, Dan, he doesn’t realize that he doesn’t have to make up to me for anything anymore.”

Dan: “What do you mean?”

Ellen: “Oh, you know, he doesn’t realize that there’s nothing more he can give me because now I … I have everything.”

Ellen is a devoted wife. She sends her husband off to work with a kiss after his morning coffee. She promises to have a cocktail ready for him when he returns from work. In fact, her whole life seems to revolve around her husband:

Ellen: “Do you know what the excitement of my days is now? Every morning there’s the excitement of having my breakfast with Dan and getting him off on the 853, and then, nothing, until midday, which overflows with the excitement of planning dinner with Agnes, and then nothing. Until early evening, when there’s the excitement of Dan’s coming home. Oh, it is exciting, it’s terribly exciting; but it’s not the kind that’s bad for me. It’s the excitement of knowing, from a lifetime of having been sort of pitied and left out of things. This morning I poured a second cup of coffee for a husband of my own.”

Her father discusses his concern for his daughter’s health with Dr. Pritchard (Ray Collins). Ellen attempts to soothe his worry over her health by telling him, “You want everything there is for me … Please try to get it through your head that despite everything, I’m really very happy. The fact that you didn’t give me the thing that makes me so happy shouldn’t make any difference, should it?”

Her father gives Dr. Pritchard a knowing glance as he says, “No, I guess it shouldn’t.”

In the next scene, Ellen visits her old best friend, Maud (Ruth Roman). We sense the tension immediately as Maud retreats inside her house without saying hello as Ellen pulls up. Nevertheless, Ellen repeatedly tries to smooth things over with her angry friend.

Maud: “Please say what you have to say to me and go … Nobody knew better than you that I was in love with Dan, and suddenly, without any warning, he marries you … Well, let me tell you something, in some respects, the daughter of a professor of bacteriology may look a lot better than the daughter of Mr. Simon Bowker, but when it’s a struggling young architect that’s doing the looking, believe me, there’s nothing prettier than a capital dollar sign.”

Ellen is struck by Maud’s cruel words, but Maud seems relentless. She looks so calm as she smokes a cigarette while lounging on the couch, speaking these harsh words to her once-close friend with confidence. Her beauty and nonchalant hatred reminds me of the way that Maxim de Winter describes his infamous first wife in the boathouse scene in 1940′s Rebecca. Maud is indeed the evil vixen in this film; she is bound and determined to have Dan for herself, by any means necessary.

Maud: “Business seems alright for him lately, doesn’t it?”

Ellen: “You saw Dan?”

Maud: “Oh, don’t worry, I just happened to be in the building, and dropped into his office. Oh, he’s still yours, at least for the time being. I told you, remember, the day of your wedding, ‘I don’t give up so easily.’ Remember? I said, ‘The first round goes to you, or your father’s money … You can have Dan,’ I said, ‘for about a year on loan.’ And that’s why you’re really here, isn’t it?  Because the year’s dwindling out fast. Only a couple of months left, and you’re scared to death. Well, Ellen, do you think I have given up?”

Rebecca de Winter, meet Maud.

When Ellen returns home and confronts her husband, he explains that he was never in love with Maud; however, he also says that he probably would have married her, had he not married Ellen. This seems to quell Ellen’s fears for some time.

Through a series of flashbacks, Ellen begins to put the pieces of the puzzle together. It is an invitation sent by Maud that is the catalyst for Ellen’s discovery. All in one afternoon, Ellen discovers that she has a potentially fatal medical condition, and that her father likely paid Dan to marry her. Obviously, this is a devastating discovery for our sweet and innocent leading lady. McGuire’s performance brought me to tears several times; my heart broke for her as she discovered that her husband had not married her for love, but for her father’s money. In the scene pictured below, Ellen telephones her father to confirm her suspicions about his influence over her husband. She learns all at once that she has little time left to live, and that her father made a deal with her attractive husband to allow her happiness in her supposedly short life. This is an especially painful realization for Ellen, as she has been ill almost her entire life. She had never had the attention of young men, and she wasn’t allowed much physical activity such as sports and games with her friends. She believed that her husband loved her, and she seemed so very happy as a doting wife. When she confronts her father over the phone, she repeatedly screams that she wishes for death. It is a moving and tragic scene.

Ellen: ”Explain?! Get well?! Who wants to get well?! I want to die, Father. Don’t you understand?! I want to die!”

Truly, it is the superb acting in this film which made it so memorable. Dorothy McGuire made my heart break alongside Ellen’s. Ruth Roman was entirely successful in making me fear husband-hunting vixens like the beautiful and cruel Maud. By the end of the film, Louis Calhern actually made me learn to love her misguided father, for although he makes some terrible decisions, ultimately, he loves his daughter dearly, and only wants her to have some happiness in her short life. Last, but certainly not least, Van Johnson stole my heart with his sincere devotion to his wife’s health and well-being: “I love you, Ellen … I love you so much more than I ever dreamed it was possible for me to love anyone.” With his freckled face and friendly attitude, who could resist his charm? If you’re a fan of Dorothy McGuire, Van Johnson, or Ruth Roman, this is a must-see film.

As a result of the excellent acting, Invitation is awarded three teardrops on our Maudlin Meter.

A little bit o’ Buster in the good ol’ summertime.

Posted on by under hahas, loving lucy, magnificent musicals

This post is our small contribution to Project Keaton, a month-long celebration of all things Buster Keaton. Check out The Kitty Packard Pictorial for more information, and see the Project Keaton Tumblr site for contributions from other bloggers and participating writers from around the world!

By the 1940s, Buster Keaton’s days as one of the giants of silent film were long over. It would take another couple of decades for the genius of his early work to gain the critical appreciation it enjoys now. In the meantime, Keaton existed in a kind of cinematic limbo. While on contract with MGM–the studio where he had found such great success with silent classics The Navigator (1924) and The Cameraman (1928)–he spent much of his time as a gag writer, preparing and choreographing bits for other performers. But even though most of his work was behind the scenes, Keaton did appear in supporting roles in a dozen B-pictures throughout the 1940s, culminating in his appearance in the 1949 musical In the Good Old Summertime.

Summertime is a musical remake of the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch charmer The Shop Around the Corner, starring Van Johnson and Judy Garland in the roles played by James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan in the earlier film. The action is moved from Budapest to Chicago, and the main characters are coworkers in a music store which is, coincidentally enough, owned by the Hungarian Otto Oberkugen (who is rather appropriately played by Hungarian actor S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall). The essential plot remains the same: Andy (Johnson) and Veronica (Garland) are constantly at one another’s throats, but unbeknownst to each other, they are secret pen pals who have gradually fallen in love with one another through their correspondence. Like its predecessor, Summertime is populated with a fantastic supporting cast, including Keaton, Spring Byington, and True Classics’ beloved “Cuddles.” There’s even a brief cameo at the end of the movie by Garland’s two-year-old daughter, Liza Minnelli.

A resigned Buster and an oblivious Cuddles.

Keaton plays the role of Oberkugen’s put-upon nephew, Hickey (the counterpart to Felix Bressart’s abused underling Pirovitch in Corner), and his trademark “stone-faced” persona is put to excellent use here. But his finest moment in the film comes from a spectacular pratfall which destroys a violin. Oberkugen’s most prized possession is a rare Stradivarius violin, even though he cannot play the instrument worth a damn. Andy “borrows” the violin one evening, loaning it to a friend of his for an important recital. On the same night, however, Oberkugen wants to give a performance at his engagement party to Nellie (Byington). Andy substitutes another violin, but as Hickey carries it to the stage for Oberkugen’s performance, he stumbles and smashes the instrument beyond recognition, much to Oberkugen’s horror.

Keaton executes the fall brilliantly. There is nothing contrived about his stumble; to the audience, it looks as though the actor has genuinely tripped on his own two feet without forethought, and even though his arms windmill comically, the performance is not overly exaggerated. And afterwards, as Keaton tries in vain to put the demolished instrument back together, his panicked befuddlement is still believable. Classic Buster, in every sense.

As seamlessly as Keaton performs the stunt, however, he was not originally supposed to even play the role. In the first script of the film, the character of Hickey was conceived as a young romantic rival to Andy. MGM turned to Keaton to come up with a plausible and funny scenario for the violin-breaking scene. Yet after composing the trick, director Robert Z. Leonard realized that no one else would be able to pull off the scene as believably as Buster Keaton. The part was rewritten as an older man specifically for the actor.

Keaton also coached Johnson and Garland through the inspired shtick of their characters’ initial meeting (which you can see in the first few minutes of the video embedded above), during which Andy inadvertently destroys Garland’s umbrella, dress, and hat. Garland is particularly winning in this bit–she does all the heavy lifting, from the tumble to dealing with her suddenly unruly mop of hair–while Johnson lays on a thick layer of slightly befuddled charm.

As a side note, this wasn’t the first nor the last time Keaton would serve in the role of comedic mentor. For instance, in the mid-1940s, Keaton shared an office at the studio (jokingly christened “The Boors Nest”) with his former silent screen director Ed Sedgwick and starlet/B-movie queen Lucille Ball. Recognizing her skill and strong sense of comedic timing, Keaton showed her all of his patented “tricks of the trade” when it came to the rigors of physical comedy and the intricacies of working with props. Perhaps most importantly, Keaton taught Ball how to own and yet respect her props, a quality that can be seen in countless I Love Lucy episodes. Indeed, Keaton’s influence on the development of the Lucy Ricardo character cannot be denied–it’s there every time Lucy accidentally sets her putty nose on fire or ends up with a loving cup on her head.

Buster and Lucy, clowning around.

In the Good Old Summertime shows that, even at the age of fifty-four and years removed from his heyday of dangerous stunt work in silent pictures, Buster Keaton could still throw his body around with sheer abandon, and make even the most slapstick-y of pratfalls look completely natural and effortless. Summertime was the final movie Keaton would make for MGM, and in some ways, it marks the end of an era. Before his death in 1966, Keaton would go on to small parts in other movies–a brief appearance in Sunset Blvd., a role opposite fellow silent screen legend Charlie Chaplin in Limelight (1952), the obligatory cameo in the comedian-packed It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)–but leaving the studio that had produced some of his biggest hits put a definitive period on a major chapter in Keaton’s life and career.

“Wouldn’t that be nice, a lifetime full of last days?”

Posted on by under blogathon, LAMB, lit adaptations

The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954) is based on a 1931 short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald called “Babylon Revisited.” Fitzgerald’s often-anthologized story, with its dark themes of disillusionment and self-imposed alienation, is  a seminal work of American modernism. However, it loses something in its translation to the screen. As with many literary adaptations in Production Code-controlled Hollywood, the story’s rather bleak message is lost in the wake of multiple changes to the original material, resulting in a generally ineffective film.

The bulk of the film is structured as a flashback, framed by two relatively short scenes in the present day. As the movie begins, Charles Wills (Van Johnson), an American writer, has traveled to Paris to see his daughter, Vicki. We are then transported back to 1945, as Charles, then a journalist and aspiring novelist, joins in the celebrations of V-E Day. He meets a young American woman, Marion Elliswirth (Donna Reed), who instantly falls in love with him. She takes him to a party at her home, hosted by her gregarious father, James (Walter Pidgeon). There, he meets Helen (Elizabeth Taylor), Marion’s beautiful younger sister, and much to Marion’s jealous displeasure, Charles and Helen become smitten with one another, eventually marrying. But their marriage is fraught with difficulty—initially, Charles wants to return to America, but Helen revels in the Parisian lifestyle and insists on staying. As the years pass, both Charles and Helen flirt with the idea of engaging in affairs on the side, and their attitudes reverse: Helen slowly becomes disillusioned with the frivolity of their lives, while Charles becomes more enmeshed in the decadence. Inevitably, tragedy follows, as Charles’ irresponsibility leads to his losing the most important people in his life.

I first saw this movie in an American lit class as an undergrad. Honestly, I think the professor’s reason for showing the film was merely an excuse to get out of lecturing for a couple of days, because the transfer from story to film is clunky, at best, and adds little to an understanding of the story’s broader themes. In large part, this is due to the filmmakers’ decision to move the action from the early 1930s to the 1950s. Fitzgerald’s story is awash in the post-Jazz Age period, and part of the story involves Charles’ rejection and repudiation of the excesses of that time period—excesses in which he and Helen indulged wholeheartedly. In that respect, Charles is a stand-in for the author, who uses the story to reflect on the irreparable damage of self-indulgent behavior.

But moving the film ahead two decades tempers the impact of Fitzgerald’s message. In general, the post-World War II era was a relatively hopeful time, in sharp contrast to the ennui that defined the post-World War I time period. The characters’ actions and lifestyle seem out of place as they are situated in the film. Additionally, the change to the ending marks an abrupt shift in tone. Whereas the story ends with Charles being stymied yet again in his attempt to gain custody of his daughter (called “Honoria” in Fitzgerald’s work), the movie tacks on a happy ending that belies the despairing tone of “Babylon Revisited.”

The cast is, by and large, better than the material they have been given. Johnson, who is not a particularly strong dramatic actor, nonetheless handles himself relatively well as Charles, ably capturing the character’s bitterness and self-destructive qualities (though his best scenes are the lighter ones, particularly during his early romance with Helen). But though Charles is the protagonist and ostensibly the central figure of the story, Taylor is the undisputed focus of the film. Only twenty-two at the time, she had already been a prominent figure in Hollywood for a decade, successfully graduating from childhood roles such as her breakthrough performance in 1944′s National Velvet, and moving into adult parts with the popularity of 1950′s Father of the Bride and 1951′s A Place in the Sun. As Helen, Taylor perfectly portrays the character’s growth throughout the film, from her vivacious and charming youth through her development into a despairing and world-weary woman. It’s a solid performance from the young actress, who reveled in the chance to further separate herself from the innocent roles of her early career.

The supporting cast is just as solid. Reed is quietly effective in her underwritten role as the jealous Marion, giving yet another moving, dramatic performance in the vein of her Oscar-winning role in the previous year’s From Here to Eternity. Pidgeon, in the midst of a long career that had begun in silent film, is a welcome authoritative presence. And look for Eva Gabor and Roger Moore in supporting roles as Charles’ and Helen’s would-be lovers.

In the end, despite the best efforts of a talented cast, the movie adaptation simply does not capture the hopeless verve of Fitzgerald’s brilliant story. And it’s a shame, considering that the film treatment was penned by Julius and Philip Epstein, who were responsible for one of the best scripts ever written (1942′s Casablanca). The sense of futility and despondency that permeates “Babylon Revisited” is replaced by pure sentiment, marked by the addition of a feel-good, Hollywood-crafted happily-ever-after, and ultimately, this watered-down story of loss and redemption just rings false.

This movie is in the public domain, which means that a multitude of cheaply-produced DVD versions of this film are floating around out there. My own copy comes from an inexpensive collection of other public domain films including 1934′s Of Human Bondage and 1936′s My Man Godfrey (the collection was a gift, and I don’t really recommend it—the quality of each DVD print is not all that great). Paris is also available for download for free on several sites including the Internet Archive, so if you’re interested in seeing this film for yourself, it’s readily available!

Dear friend.

Posted on by under best.films.ever., brandie's faves

I adore The Shop Around the Corner. I say that mainly to warn you that this post will feature much fawning and adoration for one of the best films I’ve ever had the pleasure of seeing. And the fact that it has become a holiday classic over the years is merely a bonus, meaning more and more people are exposed to its sheer brilliance every holiday season.

Released in 1940, Shop stars James Stewart as Alfred Kralik, salesman at Matuschek and Co., a store in Budapest. When Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) comes in looking for employment, she charms store owner Hugo Matuschek (Frank Morgan) and earns herself a position, much to the irritation of Kralik. The film explores their antagonistic relationship at work, juxtaposed with their growing romantic relationship as secret pen-pals. When Kralik discovers that the woman who drives him nuts at work is the epistolary woman of his dreams, his reaction sets off a chain of events that leads to the ultimate happy ending.

Seems like a simple enough movie, right? Yet The Shop Around the Corner is anything but. The film, directed by Ernst Lubitsch, is the premier example of what scholars and critics have labeled the “Lubitsch touch.” There is no true definition of what people mean when they label the director’s films as having that special quality. Generally, the Lubitsch touch represents an amalgamation of seemingly contradictory styles into one beautifully-rendered production. To that end, The Shop Around the Corner combines romance, drama, suspense, wit, melodrama, sophistication, and humor into one cohesive statement about the human experience. How many other films can do that–make you feel happy, sad, lonely, joyful, depressed, and vitally alive, all at once?

This is one of those movies in which the supporting cast is just as important as the leading roles. The Matuschek and Co. crew provide a heartfelt and sometimes sober backdrop for the romance developing between Kralik and Novak. Morgan, as their unhappily-married boss, is perhaps at his most brilliant in this film, engaging our sympathies as he stumbles through the movie. The subplot concerning Matuschek’s growing suspicions about Kralik’s supposed dalliances with his boss’ wife runs the risk of delving into the maudlin, but Morgan maintains a nice balance of melancholy and bluster.

The movie also features several standout performances among the other members of the supporting cast, including frequent Lubitsch collaborator Felix Bressart as Kralik’s friend (and Matuschek’s punching bag) Pirovitch, and Joseph Schildkraut as Vadas, the smarmy two-faced employee who is actually romancing the boss’ wife. William Tracy also provides a great comedic turn as smart-mouthed Pepi, the store’s errand boy.

True, there is a sense of sentimentality at the heart of this movie. You’d have to be the grinchiest Grinch in the history of grinches not to respond to the truly lovely romantic touches sprinkled throughout the script. And seeing as how the bulk of the action happens around Christmas, such sentimentality is to be expected. But Shop is so much more than that. It’s hard to put into words exactly what I mean.

All I can say is, this movie touches something inside of me. Sometimes, when times are tough, all we need is a reminder that love and hope can be found anywhere–in the friendship of an understanding pal, or a kind gesture from a figure of authority, or even in a heartfelt letter from an anonymous source, assuring us that someone–anyone–is out there listening and caring and believing in us. There is so much love in the world, and in The Shop Around the Corner, it’s encapsulated neatly into 99 minutes for our viewing pleasure. How can you beat that?

You know what? Here’s how much I love this movie–I, a notorious hater of remakes (as there have been so few that have actually worked over the years), actually don’t mind the two remakes this movie spawned. Granted, neither of them reaches anywhere near the levels of brilliance to which Shop ascends, but each has its moments.

1949′s In the Good Old Summertime stars Judy Garland and Van Johnson as the feuding pen-pal paramours. By virtue of its stars, this film has been injected with a healthy dose of musical numbers, and the action has been moved to a Chicago music store. If you are a consistent reader of this blog, it should not surprise you that one of the big draws for me in this film is the presence of S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall as Garland and Johnson’s boss. The movie also features stone-faced classic film stalwart Buster Keaton–employing some deft physical comedy with Cuddles’ precious violin that recalls some of his more celebrated movie stunts–and the ever-appealing Spring Byington. The movie also marks the first ever big-screen appearance of two-year-old Liza Minnelli, Garland’s uber-talented daughter.

Summertime is the lesser of the two remakes. Transforming the script of a previously-produced film into a musical was not unheard of in Hollywood–look at the bulk of the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis films, for instance–but some accomplished this much more cleanly than others. As the male lead, Johnson lacks Stewart’s earlier earnestness and demonstrates little of Tom Hanks’ later charms. Garland, whose legendary troubles had reached a pinnacle in the late 1940s, only seems to come alive during her musical performances, and even then, she lacks much of the spark that made earlier films like 1944′s Meet Me in St. Louis so memorably endearing. Still, though this remake is little more than a trifle, it is an enjoyable one nonetheless.

When Shop was reworked in 1998 for the Internet age, pairing golden film couple Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan for the third time, the screenwriters did a better job of retaining the spirit of the original. I’m not the biggest fan of Nora Ephron (who tends to wring the maudlin out of the most inane of situations), but I think this may be her best script ever, combining the influence of the original film and elements of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Thankfully, the story does not lose any humor upon being translated from a turn-of-the-century period piece to a modern-day examination of the sticky intertwining of business and personal relationships.

Still, some of the emotion at the heart of The Shop Around the Corner is lost when the secret pen-pals are taken out of a shared workplace and put in competing businesses. Part of the deliciousness of the original is the close quarters in which Alfred and Klara find themselves, and though Mail throws Hanks and Ryan together as often as feasibly possible, the romantic tension takes longer to build, and it ultimately seems less vital, somehow, than the pairing of Stewart and Sullavan. That being said, Mail is quite entertaining, and makes one wish that Hanks would go back to his romantic comedy roots, as he embodies such roles quite nicely.

Despite their respective appeals, however, the remakes have nothing on the original. If you have never seen The Shop Around the Corner, you have deprived yourself of an amazing film experience. Make sure you catch this unparalleled piece of cinema history–it’s guaranteed to be a film you’ll remember.