Watch The Shop on Main Street For Free

Powerful

Please don't spend money on this.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I have little more to add to the praise in all the other comments here, except perhaps to suggest that some of them go too far. It's an excellent film, well worth seeing, very moving and very believable, all the more effective for the way it moves so quietly, step-by-step from common, everyday life to something more horrible. A scene that will stay with me is when all the town's Jews are gathered with their bags and suitcases in the town square, then are led off in a grim procession and disappear around a corner. No shooting, no beating, but it gives one the shivers.I did find the ending disappointing. I don't think a man like that would commit suicide. Yes, he would feel terrible about causing the death of the old lady, and he would be afraid of being beaten and killed for having harbored a Jew. But he is not a brave man--far from it. I don't think he has the firmness of will to hang himself. I think he'd run away and hide. After being found, he'd place his hopes in begging for forgiveness from his Fascist brother-in-law before taking his fate into his own hands. So the suicide struck me as conventional, too easy, just a convenient way to round off the plot.

In 1942, in a small town in Czechoslovakia, the poor carpenter Tony Brtko (Jozef Króner) is assigned "Aryanizator" of a small shop on the main street by his fascist brother-in-law Mark Kolkotsky (Frantisek Zvarík). His greedy wife Evelyn (Hana Slivková) is seduced with the promise of fortune, but Tony finds that the store owned by the deaf and senile seventy year-old widow Rozalie Lautmann (Ida Kaminska) is bankrupted and the old lady is financially supported by the Jewish community that promises a salary to him to help her. Tony befriends Ms, Lautmann and helps her in the store and repairs her furniture, and lures his wife with his salary. When the Jews are expelled from the town by the fascist, Tony decides to help the old lady. "Obchod na Korze" is one of those movies that make you laugh and cry. The tragic-comic and heartbreaking story of a flawed Aryan man and a senile Jewish widow is very well developed and the viewer is able to understand the despair of the lead character absolutely powerless against the powers that be, in a village where everybody knows each other. His state of mind in the end with the whole situation associated to the booze drives him to his ultimate decision. My vote is eight. Title (Brazil): "A Pequena Loja da Rua Principal" ("The Little Shop of the Main Street")

The film sort of naturally divides itself into three parts. In the first, we get the impression that we're about to witness a slow, slice-of-life movie about a small town in Czechoslovakia during the Nazi occupation. It's not entirely without interest but it looks like it's going to be a long slog. We meet Jozef Kroner, the central figure, a lazy carpenter with a loving but exasperated wife, and we meet his brother-in-law, an anti-Semitic fascist guard in his gestapo uniform. The brother-in-law visits Kroner's family, bringing gifts of food and rum gotten from his many connections. There follows a realistic scene in which the family gets drunk and argue, in between songs, until finally the men fall on the floor, pulling the tablecloth with them. A perfectly normal family evening.The second introduces us to the town itself, including those members of the community who are Jewish. Kronin's brother-in-law is in the process of "Aryanizing" the town. The process involves sending a Christian into a Jewish business and having him act as manager and clip the profits. As a "favor", the brother-in-law arranges to have Kronin become the Aryan of a shop on Main Street. "You'll be a rich man!" he promises. But the favor is done out of spite. It's a tiny button shop with an apartment in the back. And it's run by a sweet, generous, but feisty old lady (Ida Kaminsky) who is impaired by age to the point at which she can't really understand what people are trying to tell her. For that matter, she can't HEAR them. "Selling buttons is not man's work," Kroner complains, and he's not very good at it. A comic scene has him trying to cope with a shop full of babbling housewives and spilling boxes of buttons all over the floor. Eventually, Kroner and Kaminsky form a bond. The friendship makes him protective and her maternal.The third part gets entirely serious and involves the rounding up and deportation of all the Jews in the village. Here, the movie is weaker than it should be. We've grown to like Mr. Katz, the barber, and when his shop is taken over and Aryanized and he leaves, we're sad, while Katz himself is more philosophical. A Christian friend who tries to hide him is beaten and driven through the village square with a sign hung around his neck -- "Jew Lover." But when the Jews are being assembled in the square -- one by one, with that long long list of names being read through a loudspeaker -- and Kroner is torn by fear, the instinct of self-preservation, and a desire to hide Ida Kaminska, who is unaware of what's going on, the scene is naturally tragic, but it's overwrought too. It goes on too long. With Kaminska in her apartment, saying the prayers for the Sabbath, Kroner drinks a whole bottle of vodka while pacing around the shop, talking to himself, wild-eyed and manic. His final attempt to save her ends tragically for both of them.The genocidal program of the Nazis was such a monstrous event that it's difficult to deal with a movie that describes it, without the movie itself being near perfect. The terrible fate of so many millions of innocent people of all ages has to be treated carefully or else the movie comes across as an easy tear-jerker, demeaning and cheapening the event itself.This is a fine movie. It doesn't make an overly obvious grab for one's humanity, but that final scene seems to be drawn out and Kroner's final act hasn't been adumbrated. Still well worth seeing.

Those who decide to watch that movie, may see just a Nazi damaging the Slovak society by exterminating Jewish members. However, we can ask ourselves a question if Jan Kadar really meant to show how awful was the German occupation, the killings, and servility of some of the citizens to the occupant, or maybe he had something different in mind.Maybe we can actually read between the lines and realize that bringing back those difficult moments from history was supposed to be a way to send a message to younger generations showing the hidden truth of the times they were living in. If we look deeper into the history, which is depicted in the film, we will see that "The Shop on Main Street" was made during, so called communism, and it is showing the similarities between the years when Germans took over the country and the time when Soviets spread their "wings of protection" through Central and Eastern Europe. Different ways of thinking were not allowed in the corrupt societies of Eastern Block.The disagreement with the government was foreseen as doing against the socialism, and punished. That is why instead of direct critic,many artists chose various subject to show the madness of the entire ideology. The censorship forced not only Kadar but also other directors and artists to use allegories to hide the obvious truth. "The Store on Main Street" is a perfect example of that kind of approach,and at least for that reason as well as for its other qualities worth to be seen.