The Shop on the High Street (Obchod na korze)
A Film by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos
On Blu-ray & DVD on 25 July 2016
Winner of the Oscar® for Best Foreign Language Feature in 1965, Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos’ The Shop on the High Street is one of the cornerstones of world cinema, and perhaps the most internationally renowned film in all Czech cinema.
‘Tóno’ Brtko, a poor carpenter, is appointed by his despised Nazi brother-in-law to be ‘Aryan controller’ of a Jewish widow’s sewing shop in German-occupied Slovakia in 1942.
The elderly widow, Rozalie (Yiddish theatre legend Idá Kaminská, nominated here for a Best Actress Oscar® for her performance) is near deaf, isolated and partially sighted, seemingly unaware of the war or able to comprehend the danger in which she lives. Believing Tóno is simply her new assistant, the two develop a friendship that sees him maintaining that fiction as he attempts to protect her from the encroaching Nazi horror.
The Shop on the High Street is a complex tale of common lives disturbed and destroyed by war, a devastating exploration of how minor compromises can lead to complicity in the horrors of a totalitarian regime.
Special Features:
• Presented from a new 2K restoration by the Czech National Archive.
• New filmed appreciation by writer, editor and film historian Michael Brooke.
• Booklet featuring a new essay by author and film programmer Peter Hames.
• New and improved English subtitle translation.
