The Shop on High Street = Obchod na korze

The film is set during World War II in the ‘independent’ facist Slovak statelet. It concerns Tono Brtko (Jozef Kroner), a carpenter who is appointed “Aryan controller” of a button shop by his facist brother-in-law. The shop is owned by the Jewish Frau Lautmann (Ida Kaminska, doyenne of the Yiddish Theatre in Poland), who is not only elderly but deaf and short-sighted, and thinks that Tono is her new assistant. Through a mixture of weakness, vacillation and decency he fails to disabuse her, and a mutually beneficial relationship develops. Meanwhile, the fascist authorities have other plans for the town’s Jews. This is an extraordinarily effective picture of ‘everyday fascism’ in a small community, and although it revolves around a grim and tragic theme, it is played largely as a gentle comedy. Winner of the 1965 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Adapted from a novel by Ladislav Grosman. In Czech with English sub-titles.