I’ve reached a point where I can’t bring myself to rewatch too many films unless I’m doing something like this project. But my ex-wife, if she was flipping channels and found a film she’d seen and liked, she would settle down and finish it no matter how far along it was. As a result, I saw the endings for a lot of those films, and sometimes I even got a beginning. One of those frequently rewatched films was the Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan rom-com You’ve Got Mail, a fairly standard rom-com for that era starring the at-the-time most celebrated co-stars for such an outing. And, quite frankly, I didn’t much care for it. Rom-coms aren’t really my thing to start with, and I’d actually argue there were some problematic elements that I’ll probably get to below, but the bottom line is, it wasn’t my thing.
Imagine my surprise to see the film that You’ve Got Mail was a remake of on the Stacker List. I’d never seen The Shop Around the Corner, I was in no rush to do so, and I must say I have not been as pleasantly surprised by a film like this in quite some time.
See, here’s why I wasn’t really looking forward to this one, you know, beyond the whole I’m-not-really-into-rom-coms thing: You’ve Got Mail essentially paints a picture where the rich scion of a large book store chain is romancing, anonymously, a woman whose own small business-style bookshop is in the process of being put out of business by his giant corporate chain of personality-free stores. The film ends with the couple together, and while I suppose that’s good for them, it also means that the small town shop was bought out, and whatever positive influence she will have on the business, it still suggests that she is being rewarded with money after falling in love in with him, and the small town shop is still being bought out by the giant, faceless corporation. Take away how cute a couple Hanks and Ryan were in those days, and there isn’t much to feel good about over this whole thing. I knew The Shop Around the Corner existed, but the only thing that made sense to me was it sure seemed a lot easier in the age of the Internet to have two people find love through anonymous correspondence.
Imagine my surprise to find that all of the problematic elements of the remake were not even remotely a factor in the original. Set in Budapest (based, as the film is, on a Hungarian play), the two figures are actually social equals, co-workers in a small leather goods shop. Alfred Kralik (Jimmy Stewart) is the top salesman there, and he initially suggests there’s no opening for the desperately unemployed Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan, who actually got top billing), but the store’s mercurial owner Hugo Matuschek (Frank Morgan, the Wizard of Oz himself) hires Klara anyway. Klara and Alfred bicker continuously, but Alfred has these anonymous letters from a woman whose name he doesn’t know and whose face he’s never seen. The correspondence started as a result of a newspaper ad Alfred saw.
Already I like this set-up more. There’s no hint of a monetary reward for marrying Alfred as he is basically at the same financial level as Klara. In fact, the identity of Alfred’s mystery woman is only revealed later on, after the film has established the two as having a contentious work relationship. The letters Alfred reads to his friend and co-worker Pirovitch (Felix Bressart) from Klara are actually pretty deep and romantic, not the casual, everyday back-and-forth that happens between Hanks and Ryan. And while Alfred learns the truth long before Klara does, the film seems to suggest he starts off trying to tell her, but given their relationship at work, she doesn’t seem inclined to listen to anything he has to say. It actually works much better.
But as much as I felt there was a real charm to everything Stewart and Sullavan were doing, what caught me off-guard was Morgan’s subplot. His Mr. Matuschek is,as stated, a mercurial man, one who is as likely to blow his top as anything. Various employees are familiar with how he can just explode or make weird requests, and Pirovitch has a habit of just ducking into a back room whenever he sees the boss asking other employees opinions on different products. Alfred is a bit different as he’s been a frequent dinner guest, and Matuschek seems to think of him as a son until something happens and he turns on his top salesman, eventually dismissing him with a good letter of recommendation. The truth comes out later after everyone has left: Matushcek learned his wife, a character never seen in the film, was stepping out with a young man who works for her husband. Alfred, as a frequent dinner guest, was a top suspect. He’s innocent. A much sleazier salesman was the guy after all, and Matuschek only learns this after he’s fired Alfred.
About the point Matushek learns the truth, he utters a line that said a lot to me: “Well, she just didn’t want to grow old with me.”
As someone whose own wife made it clear she didn’t want to grow old with me either, that line, the lines before it when Matushek ponders how he thought the world of his wife and had been with her for twenty-two years, really hit me hard. Not hard enough for a suicide attempt as Matushek does, and my situation was in many ways very different, but the forlorn tone he had hit me all the same.
I think it just goes to show that sometimes a good film can hit in unexpected ways for different people. If anything, it made this film a bit more realistic. It had some good comedic moments, the romance worked, and even with the final build-up to Alfred and Klara becoming a couple in the closing minutes, it just didn’t feel all that contrived like so many rom-coms that I’ve seen in my own lifetime. I could probably get into more films in this genre if they were more like The Shop Around the Corner and a lot less like You’ve Got Mail.
NEXT: OK, if this one struck me as more of an authentic sort of romantic comedy, the next film sure won’t. Be back soon for Errol Flynn at his swashbuckling best with 1938’s The Adventures of Robin Hood.
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