Czechoslovakia, 1965
Length / The Shop on the High Street:
Blu-Ray (24fps): 125 minutes
DVD (25fps): 120 minutes
Length / Special feature: 40 minutes
Sound /
Blu-Ray:
2.0 Dual Mono LPCM (48k/24-bit)
Sound /
DVD: 2.0 Dolby Dual Mono
Black and white
Original aspect ratio:
1.33:1
Language: Slovak, Yiddish
Subtitles: English
Blu-Ray: BD50
/ 1080 / 24fps / Region ABC
DVD: PAL / DVD9 / 25 fps / Region 0
Blu-Ray RRP: £19.99
DVD RRP: £12.99
Release Date: 15 Aug 2016
Second Run DVD 109 / SRBD 003
DVD |
Blu-Ray |
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Winner of the Oscar® for Best Foreign Language Feature in 1965, Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos’ The Shop on the High Street (aka The Shop on Main Street) is one of the cornerstones of World Cinema, and perhaps the most internationally renowned film in all Czechoslovak cinema.
‘Tóno’ Brtko, a poor carpenter, is appointed by his despised Nazi brother-in-law to be 'Aryan controller' of an old Jewish widow’s sewing shop in a Nazi-occupied Slovakia in 1942. The widow, Rozalia (Yiddish theatre legend Ida Kamińska, nominated here for a Best Actress Oscar® for her performance) is near deaf, isolated and partially sighted, barely even aware 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. Wonderfully written and performed, and with an extraordinary Zdenek Liška score, the film becomes a devastating examination of how minor compromises can finally lead to complicity in the horrors of tyranny.
Available on both Blu-Ray and DVD formats, The Shop on the High Street is presented from a new High Definition transfer prepared by the Czech National Film Archive.
• Presented from a brand new High Definition transfer prepared by the Czech National Film Archive.
• New, exclusive and expansive filmed appreciation by writer, editor and film historian Michael Brooke.
• 20-page booklet featuring a substantial new essay by author and film programmer Peter Hames.
• Original US press book.
• New and improved English subtitle translation.
• World premiere release on Blu-ray.
Directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos
Screenplay - Ladislav Grosman, Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos
Based on the novella ‘The Trap’ (‘Past’) by Ladislav Grosman
Cinematography - Vladimír Novotný
Music - Zdeněk Liška
Editor - Jaromír Janáček
Production design - Karel Škvor
Assistant director – Juraj Herz
Main Cast
Ida Kamińska - Rozália Lautmannová
Jozef Kroner - Antonín ‘Tóno’ Brtko
František Zvarík - Markus Kolkocký
Hana Slivková - Evelyna Brtková
Martin Hollý sr - Imro Kuchár
Martin Gregor – Jozef Katz
Other films dealing with WWII and the Nazi terror include Andrzej Munk's films Passenger and Eroica, István Szabó's Father and Confidence, Jiří Weiss' Romeo, Juliet and Darkness, Jan Němec's Diamonds of the Night, and Zbyněk Brynych's devastating Transport from Pardise (both latter films based on the writings of Arnošt Lustig) are also available on Second Run.
1965 Oscar® Winner: Best Foreign Language Film
1965 Cannes Film Festival /
Special Citation: Ida Kamińska & Jozef Kroner
1966 New York Film Critics Circle /
Winner: Best Foreign Language Film
1966 Oscar® Nomination: Best Actress - Ida Kamińska
"The Shop on the High Street, in short, is an episode of high tragedy, a concentration of the world’s absurdities, in which good, ignorant, and indecisive people like Brtko enable 'force' to get a firm hold" Ján Kadár
"The most moving film about anti-Semitism ever made...
The grand theme - as of all good modern drama - can be simply stated: How much of a man belongs to authority and how much to himself? At what point must the individual say 'No'?” Kenneth Tynan
"Infinitely moving... a masterpiece, a flawless examination of the toll of indecision and the penalty of passive decency"
Eleanor Perry, Life Magazine, Feb 1966
"Brilliant in performance and extraordinary in accomplishment... one of the fine films of our time, for all time" Judith Crist, New York Herald Tribune
"A luminous parable that exhorts viewers to examine the tragedy of social and political intolerance" KinoKultura
"The film’s fine balancing of comic charm and brooding evil as well as its rich metaphoric language are easily evident, and it certainly deserved its Academy Award" Senses of Cinema