“The Shop Around the Corner,” December 22

Friday, December 22, 8 p.m.

Rozz-Tox, 2108 Third Avenue, Rock Island IL

One of the most delightful romantic comedies in Hollywood history will enjoy at special December 22 showing when the Rock Island venue Rozz-Tox screens The Shop Around the Corner, the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch classic that inspired 1998's Tom Hanks/Meg Ryan hit You've Got Mail, was ranked number 28 on the American Film Institute's 100 Years... 100 Passions list, and is included in Time magazine's ranking of All-Time 100 Movies.

In The Shop Around the Corner, Alfred Kralik (James Stewart) and Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan) are employees at Matuschek and Company, a general store in Budapest. Klara and Alfred are constantly at odds with each other, butting heads and disagreeing on almost everything. Yet both are enamored of their respective pen pals, who serve as welcome distractions in their lives. Little do they know, however, that they are in fact each other's pen pal - and despite their outward differences, the two have unwittingly fallen in love through their letters. With Lubitch's film based on Miklós László 1937 Hungarian play Parfumerie, the American screenplay was written by Samson Raphaelson (alongside an uncredited Ben Hecht), and the movie was selected, in 1999, for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

Currently boasting a 99-percent "freshness" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the critical consensus on this timeless black-and-white masterpiece states: "Deftly directed by Ernst Lubitsch from a smart, funny script by Samson Raphaelson, The Shop Around the Corner is a romantic comedy in the finest sense of the term." Dave Kehr raved that Lubitsch makes "brilliant deployment of point of view, allowing the audience to enter the perceptions of each character at exactly the right moment to develop maximum sympathy and suspense." Film historian David Thomson, meanwhile, called Lubitsch's work "among the greatest of all films," adding, "This is a love story about a couple too much in love with love to fall tidily into one another's arms. Though it all works out finally, a mystery is left, plus the fear of how easily good people can miss their chances. ... [The movie] is a treasury of hopes and anxieties based in the desperate faces of Stewart and Sullavan. It is a comedy so good it frightens us for them. The café conversation may be the best meeting in American film. The shot of Sullavan's gloved hand, and then her ruined face, searching an empty mail box for a letter is one of the most fragile moments in film."

The Shop Around the Corner will be screened in Rock Island on December 22, admission to the 8 p.m. all-ages event is free, and more information is available by calling (309)200-0978 and visiting RozzTox.com.