The Shop on Main Street = The Shop on the high street = Obchad na korze (NTSC)

The film is set during World War II in the ‘independent’ fascist Slovak statelet. It concerns Tono Brtko, a carpenter who is appointed ‘Aryan controller’ of a button shop by his fascist brother-in-law. The shop is owned by the Jewish Frau Lautmann, 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. 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. Cast includes Ida Kaminska, Jozef Kroner, Hana Slivkova, Frantisek Zvarik. In Czech with English subtitles.