Boasting accolades such as the best romantic comedy of its day, The Shop Around the Corner is a charming 1940s tale about the employees of an upmarket gift shop in far off Budapest (Hungary). When newly hired Klara Novak (Sullavan) starts work at the shop, it is hate at first sight' between her and sales clerk Alfred Kralik (Stewart). Sparks fly, tension builds and much repartee is flung across the room.

Loathsome to one another in the flesh, neither believes the other capable of having a more amiable side. But that more amiable side is well and truly ticking in each of them and is busily engaged in a secret amour with a pseudonymous pen pal. Little do they suspect that the person each is seducing through the mail is in fact the very person they are sparring with in the flesh. Until, of course, they decide to meet.

Ernst Lubitsch is impeccable in his direction of Samson Raphaelson's delightful script, leaving us with a film which is a delicious and delicate blend of comedy and romantic charm.The Shop Around the Corner is adapted from the Hungarian play by Nikolaus (Miklos) Laszlo. First remade in 1949 as In the Good Old Summertime, more recently it inspired You've Got Mail (1998) in which Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, at odds in life, fall in love on-line.