Shop on Main Street

UPC: 037429156124

Studio: Criterion

Summary: The 1965 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, The Shop on Main Street (Obch o Na Korze) stars Josef Kroner as Tono Briko, a slothful Slovakian carpenter. The time is World War II, and the occupying Nazis are nationalizing all Jewish-owned businesses. To please his ambitious family, Tono takes the job of "Aryan comptroller" for a rundown button shop managed by an elderly Jewish woman (Ida Kaminska). He realizes that his new job won't bring much in the way of money; the old woman, deaf as a post, realizes nothing, not even that a war is on. The shopkeeper's Jewish friends, knowing that the woman will be carted off for extermination if she doesn't have an Aryan coworker, offer to pay Tono if he'll stay on as her assistant. Kroner and the old woman form a friendship, but when the order goes out that all Jews be rounded up, he panics and prepares to turn her over to the Nazis. His last-minute change of heart unfortunately comes too late. In contrast to the tragic denouement of the film, Shop on Main Street closes on a idyllic, dreamlike sequence, showing the smiling shopkeeper and clerk walking together through the countryside, free from all danger and fear. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Category: Drama

Awards: Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama – null Best Foreign Language Film – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Actress – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Special Mention – Cannes Film Festival Special Mention – Cannes Film Festival Best Foreign Film – New York Film Critics Circle Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama – Hollywood Foreign Press Association

Features: New digital transfer
U.S. theatrical trailer
New & improved English subtitle translation
Optimal image quality: RSDL dual-layer edition

Shop on Main Street

Format: Digital Video Disc (DVD)

Release Date: 09/18/2001

Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Pre-1954 Standard

Audio: 1 USA & territories, Canada, 5.1 Dolby Digital 5.1

Runtime: 125 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Subtitles: English

Region: USA & territories, Canada

Chapters: Side #1 --
0. Chapters
1. Titles/Starks [3:47]
2. "On The Eve Of 1942" [4:26]
3. "Fascist Politics" [2:12]
4. "Our Tower Of Babylon" [3:05]
5. In-Laws [3:34]
6. "Our Time Has Come" [2:40]
7. "Ordinance No.31.40" [4:11]
8. "It Shines!" [1:50]
9. "He's A Real Man" [2:15]
10. "Don't Sell On Credit" [2:09]
11. "I'm Your Arisator" [6:10]
12. "A Fish For Sabbath" [3:10]
13. "You'll Be Like My Own Son" [1:51]
14. A Solution [1:31]
15. "And The Keys?" [1:21]
16. "Closed For Inventory" [4:23]
17. "I Look Like Chaplin" [3:52]
18. "Where Did You Get The Hat?" [2:51]
19. "We Sell Everything" [6:33]
20. "Tumba Tumba-L?" [2:34]
21. "Tin Loudspeakers" [3:47]
22. "Mrs.Lautmann's Benefactor" [2:13]
23. "The Lord's Will And Doing" [4:22]
24. "My Boy Danko" [2:38]
25. "A Nice Goose" [1:21]
26. "Back In The Autumn" [4:24]
27. "I'm A Jew-Lover" [2:47]
28. Sabbath Supper [1:30]
29. "A Saint With A Halo" [4:35]
30. "It Was A Terrible Dream" [4:34]
31. "Abeles Hendrick,Abeles Rosas" [6:20]
32. "Our Laws Are Kind" [4:04]
33. "A Pogrom" [8:52]
34. "I Didn't Want..." [3:51]
35. Danko Comes Home [5:57]
36. Color Bars [:20]

Tom Wiener

On its initial release, The Shop on Main Street contained several ingredients that would make it an instant classic: it was a heartfelt drama about the effect of the Holocaust on two humble individuals, and a film made by individuals who were dealing with a totalitarian regime of their own. The film can't help but be affecting, but it has lost some of its luster with the subsequent release of more complex studies of some of the same issues, namely Lacombe, Lucien, The Conformist, and Divided We Fall. And at 125 minutes, this simple story of a peasant who comes to understand belatedly the complicity he shares in the persecution of the Jews in his village, seems over-extended. Tono's fretting in the button shop as the roll of names is called in the town square outside seems to go on forever, and there's a crucial dramatic inconsistency: He should feel relieved when the name of his elderly friend, Rosalie Lautmann, isn't called. However, the film shouldn't be casually dismissed; both lead performers are superb, especially Ida Kaminska as Rosalie, and there is one bravura piece of camerawork, when Tono retreats to the back rooms of the shop and the camera prowls around each room until it "finds" him and he bolts to another room, where the process is repeated. ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Eugen Senaj  Actor 
Gita Misurova  Actor 
Elmar Klos  Actor 
Mikulas Ladizinsky  Actor 
Tibor Vadas  Actor 
Frantisek Papp  Actor 
Adam Matejka  Actor 
Ján Kadár  Director 
Ján Kadár  Screenwriter 
Elmar Klos  Director 
Elmar Klos  Screenwriter 
Zdenek Liska  Composer (Music Score) 
Ladislav Hanus  Producer 
Jaromir Lukas  Producer 
Jordan Balurov  Producer 
Ladilsav Grossman  Screenwriter 
Josef Kroner  Actor 
Frantisek Zvarik  Actor 
Ida Kaminska  Actor 
Hana Slivkova  Actor 
Martin Holly  Actor 
Helena Zvarikova  Actor 
Martin Gregory  Actor 

Country: Czechoslovakia