The Shop on Main Street

The Shop on Main Street CzechSlovak Obchod na korze in the UK A Shop on the High Street is a 1965 Czechoslovak film about the Aryanization programme during World War II in the Slovak State.

During World War II, a mildmannered Slovak carpenter Anton Tno Brtko Jozef Kroner is offered the chance to take over the sewing notions store of an old, neardeaf Jewish woman Rozlia Lautmannov Ida Kamiska as a part of the enactment of an Aryanization regulation in the town. As Tno attempts to explain to Mrs. Lautmannov, who is oblivious of the world outside and generally confused, that he has come to be her supervisor and owner of the store, Imrich Kuchr Martin Holl, Sr., a Slovak opponent of Aryanization, steps in and reveals to Brtko that the business itself is less than profitable, as Lautmannov herself relies on donations. The Jewish community then offers the amiable Brtko a weekly payment if he does not give up the store, which would otherwise be given to a new, possibly ruthless Aryanizer. Tno accepts and lets Mrs. Lautmannov believe he is her nephew who has come to help in the store. Their relationship grows, until the authorities round up the towns entire Jewish population for transport, and Tno finds himself conflicted as to whether he should turn in the senile Mrs. Lautmannov, or hide her. When the woman finally becomes aware of the pogrom all around her, she panics, and in attempting to silence her, Tno accidentally kills her. The realization devastates him, and he hangs himself.The screenplay had a bilingual CzechSlovak history. The screenwriter Ladislav Grosman 19211981 was born and grew up in Slovakia. Grosman published his precursor to the screenplay, the short story The Trap Past, in Czech in 1962. Only three of its themes made it into the film. He subsequently reworked and expanded it, still in Czech, as a literarynarrative screenplay published in 1964 under the title The Shop on Main Street Obchod na korze, which already contained the films storyline, although not in the usual American screenplay format. He then reworked it into a shooting script with Slovak dialogues in cooperation with the films designated directors Jn Kadr and Elmar Kl

Source: Wikipedia