General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

The Shop on Main Street

The Shop on Main Street (Slovak: Obchod na korze) is a 1965 Czechoslovak black-and-white drama directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, set in 1942 in the fascist Slovak State, where a poor carpenter is appointed "Aryan controller" of a button shop owned by an elderly deaf Jewish widow¹^•². It won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film and is counted among the key works of the Czechoslovak New Wave³^•⁴.

Key fact	Detail
Original title	Obchod na korze; working titles Past / Obchod na korzu⁴
Directors	Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, their seventh and penultimate joint project⁵
Source	Novella Past by Ladislav Grosman, published in the magazine Plamen in 1962; Grosman co-wrote the screenplay⁴
Principal cast	Ida Kaminska (Rozália Lautmannová), Jozef Kroner (Tono Brtko), Hana Slivková, František Zvarík¹
Awards	Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film; Kaminska nominated for Best Actress; New York Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Film, 1966³^•⁶
Production	Filmed 1964 at Barrandov Film Studio, location scenes in Sabinov; Czechoslovak premiere 1 October 1965 in Prague⁶^•⁷
Restoration	Digitally restored version premiered at the 52nd Karlovy Vary International Film Festival on 1 July 2017⁵

Spoilers

Plot

The story takes place in 1942, when the Fascist government of the Slovak Republic adopts the Nuremberg laws and transfers Jewish enterprises into the hands of screened Slovak citizens⁴. Tono Brtko, a decent carpenter, is appointed through his wife's brother-in-law Markus, a member of Hlinka's guards, as the "aryanizer" of the haberdashery of the widow Rozália Lautmannová on the town's main street⁴^•².

The shop is nearly empty, and the Jewish community, through Brtko's acquaintance Imro Kuchár, pays him a small stipend to let the old woman believe he is merely her shop assistant⁴. Lautmannová, very old and almost deaf, does not grasp what has happened to the town's Jews, and Brtko, through what one account calls a mixture of weakness, vacillation and decency, never disabuses her; a gentle, protective relationship develops between them⁸^•⁹.

When the town's Jews are summoned for transport, only the widow has been forgotten by the authorities. On the day of the deportation Brtko, paralyzed with fear, pushes her into the cellar; she dies falling down the stairs, and he hangs himself⁴.

Production

Slovak writer Ladislav Grosman published the novella Past ("Trap") in the magazine Plamen in 1962, then developed it into a literary script and a book titled Obchod na korze, published by Mladá fronta in Prague in 1965⁴. Kadár and Klos worked on the script for three years while making Death Is Called Engelchen (1963) and Accused (1964), which form a loose trilogy with The Shop on Main Street⁵.

Filming ran from 12 May to 5 November 1964 at Barrandov Film Studio, with location scenes shot in Sabinov, Czechoslovakia⁷^•⁶. Vladimír Novotný was the cinematographer, Zdeněk Liška composed the music, and the film was produced by Filmové studio Barrandov¹^•⁷. Although often labeled a Slovak film because of its setting and Oscar, it was produced by the Czech studio Barrandov with a largely Czech crew and Slovak actors⁷.

The film premiered in Prague on 1 October 1965 and nationwide on 8 October; it was withdrawn from distribution on 30 June 1971, with renewed premieres in 1989, 1995, and 2018⁷.

Reception and awards

The film won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, and sources date the award differently: the Criterion Collection says 1965, the Karlovy Vary festival account says 1966, and the Czech Filmový přehled database says 1967¹^•⁵^•⁴. The discrepancy reflects the lag between a film's year of production and the ceremony at which it was honored. It was preceded among Eastern European Academy Award winners by the Soviet documentary Moscow Strikes Back, which won the award in 1943³^•⁹^•¹⁴.

Because the film was shown in Europe in 1965 but released in Los Angeles the following year, it was also eligible for other categories at the 1966 Academy Awards, and Ida Kaminska, a legend of the Yiddish theater, was nominated for Best Actress⁹^•³. The film was also a Palme d'Or nominee at Cannes and received a special honorary mention there, according to the Czech distribution record, and won the New York Film Critics Award for Best Foreign Film in 1966³^•⁷^•⁶.

The critic Kenneth Tynan called it "the most moving film about anti-Semitism ever made," and the screenwriter Eleanor Perry, reviewing it for Life magazine, praised it as "a flawless examination of the toll of indecision and the penalty of passive decency"³.

Place in Czechoslovak cinema

The film was made during the period of Czech cinema known as the New Wave, though its directors were an established duo rather than members of the younger generation associated with the movement, such as Věra Chytilová, Jan Němec, and Jiří Menzel⁵^•⁴. Encyclopedia.com's survey notes that it was made in the tradition of classical film, without the formal innovations or the visible influence of cinéma vérité and the French New Wave seen in younger directors' work⁶.

The film was not entirely welcomed at home. A note returned during screenplay approval read, "Who would think this could be a film?" The philosopher Egon Gál explained in a bonus interview for the restored edition that neither collaborators nor Jews wanted to revisit the period: "The people who went through it wanted to forget. It was a taboo that Slovaks collaborated"¹⁰.

For Ján Kadár, who was Jewish and had escaped a camp during the war, losing almost his entire family, the film was a means of comprehending that experience; in a 2001 essay he wrote that his work was shaped not by the fate of all six million murdered Jews but by the fate of his father and his friends' fathers¹⁰^•¹.

The film's success opened possibilities only briefly. Kadár emigrated after 1968, following the suppression of the Prague Spring, and Klos became a victim of the Normalization purges; Klos died in 1993 at the age of 83⁵^•¹¹.

Legacy

The film remains a reference point for the history of Aryanization (Nazi-era forced transfer of Jewish businesses to non-Jews) in Slovakia; a 2023 Slovak survey of Holocaust perception notes that, because of the Oscar-winning film, Aryanization is for most people associated with businesses such as shops and workshops, although the historical process covered all types of property¹².

A digitally restored print, the fifth restoration financed by the Czech Film Foundation, premiered at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival on 1 July 2017, presented by Elmar Klos's son, who remarked that the work remained current "especially for the young who do not remember much and can be easily manipulated"⁵^•¹³.

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026