Synopsis
The Shop on Main Street (Obchod na korze, 1965) is a Czechoslovak war drama you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos.
In Nazi-occupied Slovakia, a carpenter named Tono Brtko is appointed "Aryan comptroller" of a tiny button shop belonging to Rozalia Lautmann, an elderly Jewish widow. The shop earns almost nothing, but Tono is too afraid of his wife to walk away, and too uncertain how to explain his new legal authority to the confused old woman. Slowly, reluctantly, the two of them form a kind of friendship — right up to the moment deportation orders arrive in town.
Ida Kamińska's work as Rozalia earned her an Academy Award nomination; the film itself took home the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film and a Golden Globe, plus a special distinction at Cannes. What makes it linger is not the moral question it poses but the way it declines to answer it cleanly. Stream The Shop on Main Street (1965) online on iFILM.
Starring
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