The Shop Around the Corner

The Shop Around the Corner (1940) is Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy you can watch online on iFILM. In a Budapest gift store called Matuschek and Company, head clerk Alfred Kralik (James Stewart) and new hire Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) bicker over nearly everything.

What neither of them knows is that they have each been pouring their hearts into letters with an anonymous pen pal answered through a newspaper ad, and that pen pal is the very co-worker they can't stand. The audience is in on it from the start, which makes every scene sweeter and sharper: they snap at each other over a cigarette box by day, then reread the stranger's letters by night. Meanwhile the aging shop owner Hugo Matuschek (Frank Morgan) suspects his wife of an affair, and the gentle comedy quietly bruises.

Lubitsch shot almost the entire picture inside that single store, and the confinement gives every line its precision. The story has been retold many times, all the way to You've Got Mail with Hanks and Ryan, yet the original remains the gold standard. Stream The Shop Around the Corner (1940) online on iFILM.