A warm, sweet and remarkably charming film about two antagonistic workers in the same shop (James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan) who are carrying on a romance via mailbox without either of them knowing it. The key to this film's success is that Ernst Lubitsch keeps any syrupy sentimentality absent and calls on his actors to give low-key, unfussy performances. As a result, you fall in love with virtually all of them.
There's a strong undercurrent of melancholy running through this film which I appreciated. Loneliness is a major theme, most obviously represented in the character of the shop's owner and manager, played wonderfully by Frank Morgan. He discovers that he's being cuckolded by his wife, and realizes that the successful life he's created for himself isn't enough to keep him from feeling lonely when he doesn't have a partner to share it. This makes the timid romance between Stewart and Sullavan all the more poignant, because they're both reaching out to this unseen other, who each thinks of as a soulmate before they've even met. Of course we know everything will turn out right in the end, but the movie doesn't let you forget the dismal feeling either of them would feel if they found that the reality didn't live up to the fantasy.
Lubitsch fills his movie out with a crackerjack cast that has boatloads of chemistry. The little group of shop employees refers to itself throughout the movie as a little family, and that's exactly how it feels to us as well.
This is a wonderful, unsung romance.
Grade: A+
There's a strong undercurrent of melancholy running through this film which I appreciated. Loneliness is a major theme, most obviously represented in the character of the shop's owner and manager, played wonderfully by Frank Morgan. He discovers that he's being cuckolded by his wife, and realizes that the successful life he's created for himself isn't enough to keep him from feeling lonely when he doesn't have a partner to share it. This makes the timid romance between Stewart and Sullavan all the more poignant, because they're both reaching out to this unseen other, who each thinks of as a soulmate before they've even met. Of course we know everything will turn out right in the end, but the movie doesn't let you forget the dismal feeling either of them would feel if they found that the reality didn't live up to the fantasy.
Lubitsch fills his movie out with a crackerjack cast that has boatloads of chemistry. The little group of shop employees refers to itself throughout the movie as a little family, and that's exactly how it feels to us as well.
This is a wonderful, unsung romance.
Grade: A+