Among its many other outstanding qualities, The Shop on Main Street marks the introduction of the Czechoslovakian New Wave to this blog. That's a very good thing. I really enjoyed the deep plunge I took into this sadly short-lived cinema scene in the summer of 2012, when I spent a few months watching and reviewing the Pearls of the Czech New Wave box set, part of my Journey through the Eclipse Series column on CriterionCast.com. The six features therein were all shot in the months and years immediately following the film I'm about to review here, and in many ways, The Shop on Main Street feels a lot less "New Wave-y" than its successors. Though it shares the ensemble casts of salt o' the earth kooks and eccentrics, offering generous servings of acerbic humor and plenty of hard-earned, furrowed-brow and world-weary resignation from righteously aggrieved commoners, this Academy Award winner (for best Foreign Picture of 1965) seems more polished and ready to be embraced by the cultural mainstream. The films directors, Jan Kodar and Elmar Klos, probably recognized that they had a powerful and compelling story on their hands, one that could connect with audiences in a more direct and ultimately affecting way, than the more meandering, taunting and radically subversive swipes at conventional morality that we get in films like Daisies, Capricious Summer, The Joke and the other films in that set. Perhaps the biggest difference is that The Shop on Main Street presents a starker, less ambiguous confrontation with moral evil that most everyone can agree on - the wretched cruelty and greed of ordinary citizens that made Nazi Germany's persecution and attempted extermination of Jews possible in the years prior to and during World War II - whereas those other films had more to do with more obscure and (for most viewers, remote) contemporary issues and attitudes within a society that was gasping for breath and trying to find its own voice as it struggled to differentiate itself from the Soviet bloc that had swallowed it up after Hitler's troops were ousted from their territory. Czechoslovakia was a nation forged together more for the sake of geopolitical convenience than from a pursuit of mutual values and priorities, the ideal toward which any national government ought to aspire. But in that climate of repression, fatigue and encroaching despair, a small, feisty cluster of filmmakers, writers and artists managed to create works that give voice to a universal desire for freedom of expression and self-determination.
Prior to this film, the closest I've come on this blog to covering films from this region and cultural sensibility are the three war films made in Poland in the latter half of the 1950s by Andrzej Wajda: A Generation, Kanal and Ashes and Diamonds. The Poles, the Czechs and the Slovaks all saw their homelands used as doormats, first by the Nazis and then by the Soviets as the rival powers took turns at regional dominance and the imposition of tyranny upon the more resistant elements of the populace. Given that Eastern European cinema of this era had to jump through additional bureaucratic hoops to get the approval of government censors who were especially disapproving of messages that stirred up resentment or provoked direct criticism of the ruling powers, I've developed a special admiration for these filmmakers who risked serious backlash by finding creative ways to craft movies of enduring power and substantial, insubordinate critique of repressive authoritarian regimes. Any viewer willing to take the time to transcend their own cultural limitations and give these films some time and close attention should find plenty to admire in their message and in the quality of their construction. For all the enjoyment I get from their kooky, occasionally audacious jabs at authority figures of various sorts, I'm also impressed by their suppleness and craftsmanship, and how deftly The Shop on Main Street shifts from moments of broad, earthy comedy to deeply resonating pathos. But don't just take my word for it. This trailer lays it all out in plain terms. (It's also the only supplement found on the Criterion DVD.)
So even as this film officially brings Czech cinema into the conversation on this blog, I figure that it served as an introduction to the same for its international audience back in 1965. That's not necessarily the case these days, as the early films of Milos Forman (Loves of a Blonde, The Fireman's Ball, both coming soon to this site) have generated more interest among contemporary viewers due to his success as a Hollywood director after he left Czechoslovakia in 1968 following the Prague Spring and the collapse (more or less) of that nation's New Wave scene. Add to that its relative neglect and obscurity as a Criterion entry, with a nearly barebones disc, cover art that doesn't do much to draw attention or intrigue the casual browser, and the lack of recognizable stars or the kind of sexy, reckless shenanigans of Forman's offerings (or Jiri Manzel's sly, butt-baring Closely Watched Trains), and you have a formula for diminished expectations. But often that's a fine set-up to be pleasantly surprised, and that's exactly how The Shop on Main Street struck me when I first sat down to watch it a few weeks ago. I was on vacation at the time, so I put off writing up a review, then other priorities took over, to the point I had to watch it again to refresh myself on the details and re-immerse myself in its story. I'm glad that I took the time to ponder and revisit, since the social commentary and lasting impact of the film is such that it ought to go deeper than just a tip of the hat out of respect for a solid bit of movie-making.
It has to do with a woodworker, Tono Brtko, married but childless, living with his wife in a small Slovak village in the early 1940s. He's modest, unassuming, nursing an incipient bitterness not so much at his lot in life in general but in response to the subtle but palpable bullying he senses coming at him from various directions. The German occupation government is making its presence felt, most symbolically and tangibly in his daily routine through a strangely intrusive wooden monument that's being built in the village square. Tono's been enlisted to serve on the crew, which he does somewhat grudgingly even though he recognizes a sense of dread that's being solidified into object form even in the completion of his task.
Even more galling to him is the fact that his brother in law Markus, a boisterous bragging blowhard, has zealously embraced the Nazi ideology, or at least its surface trappings, as an expedient means to gather and exercise clout in the village as a commanding officer in the local gentry. The appeal of fascism isn't due to some warped, pathological racism - it's mostly based on a sense of endangered privilige, a presumption of entitlement... "we have to look after our own, and it's those Jews who are getting in our way, taking more than they deserve." Tono is wary of identifying too unequivocally with the regime, and finds his own personal comfort zone of mostly muttered dissent and disengagement, though he's careful not to be too vociferous about it... at least, while sober. Give him a few drinks though and he's likely to give you a piece of his mind - the withering mockery and disdain that he'd otherwise keep safely locked up and out of earshot:
Despite the tensions that exist between Tono and Markus, the subordinate carpenter's fortunes are suddenly enhanced when Markus pulls some strings and puts him in charge of a local mercantile establishment with a Jewish owner. The program of forced "Aryanization" requires that all business in the village must now be managed by men in good standing, i.e. non-Jews - which in that economy and culture implies, at its base, that the immense fortunes supposedly hoarded by the miserly descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob will soon be at the disposal of the Gentiles assigned to oversee them. Of course Tono's long-suffering wife is giddy with excitement at the prospect of suddenly becoming rich, regardless of the methods used to achieve that prosperity. And for a short time, Tono himself gets on board with the scheme - until he meets the owner he's assigned to displace, a sweet and elderly woman named Rozalia, hard of hearing and prone to get lost in her own misty memories of days gone by. She's totally endearing, at once persistently headstrong and dangerously naive, with almost no comprehension at all of the immense peril that she and her community are facing. She regards Tono not as the mercenary usurper that he is, but as merely a kind young local man who's gone out of his way to help her run the store in her old age, a decent fellow who stands to benefit from her words of wisdom and experience.
There are numerous scenes of poignant, tear-inducing comedy that follow as Tono finds himself drawn into a deeper understanding and respect for the bonds of loyalty and mutual generosity that his Jewish neighbors have developed over who knows how long a sojourn they've endured as a people. Soon enough he begins to feel more at home in this community into which he can never assimilate than he does with his own kith and kin. The tears we shed are partly because of the comic absurdity of the situation, but also because we see the dark clouds gathering overhead as the "Tower of Babel" in the square ascends to the heavens as a portent of doom still unimaginable to most of the citizens but all too obvious to us living on the other side of this tragic history.
The story winds its way to a massively powerful and discomforting resolution though, as Tono is gradually, relentlessly cornered into making a fateful decision as to what he will do when forced to choose between his own safety and security and protecting the life of a woman whose time in this world is swiftly dwindling in any case, but who is just as precious to him as the days he counts as his own. Without divulging much in the way of details, I consider the concluding scenes of The Shop on Main Street as brilliant and emotionally gut-wrenching as any other Holocaust-related movie I've ever seen, because directors Kodar and Klos manage to cram so many profound and bewildering emotions into those final minutes - desperate hopes for an escape from the awful dilemma, torn loyalties and the dismal sense that the end of everything we've known is inexorably crashing down upon us, furious hatred and resentment that the moral order of the universe was ever allowed to get so far out of control, so inverted against all decency and honor that might ever exist between people, a horrified realization that one's own complicity at a thousand terrible steps along that path played a part in creating the reality that is now too appalling to contemplate... and then, after the lowest depths of desolation have come and gone, with all hope withered, still a sense that somehow, some way, a renewed sense of purpose and redemption must be found.
For those who prefer their cinema more unrelentingly harsh and bleak, there's some legitimate criticism that has been leveled at The Shop on Main Street's final moments, a reverential (and fantastic/escapist?) epilogue dream sequence that some might fault for perhaps softening the blow a bit, or homogenizing its bitter impact for mass consumption. I hear what they're saying, but I disagree with any notion that the ending could have been improved by maintaining the dour, pessimistic tone when we reach the terminal point of the narrative. At least, far be it from me to presume that I know better how to compose the outro of such a film than people who grew up alongside the train tracks that delivered countless loads of human cargo on one way trips to the concentration camps.
Next: Juliet of the Spirits
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