The Shop Around the Corner

With the delightful air of almost Shakespearean farce, Lubitsch’s witty adaptation of Miklós László’s Hungarian stage play is justly regarded as one of Hollywood’s finest romantic comedies. Set in a small leather goods boutique in Budapest, Stewart and Sullavan are both charming as a pair of store clerks, whose escalating contempt for one another is undercut by the blossoming romance that unwittingly develops between them via passionate anonymous correspondences. The film sparkles with pithy banter and its playfully satirical dissection of high street consumerism.