neighbors become killers
by
Douglas Messerli
Ladislav
Grosman, Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos (screenplay, based on the story by Grosman), Ján
Kadár and Elmar Klos (directors) Obchod na korze (The Shop on Main Street, previously titled The Shop on High Street) / 1965
The doltish carpenter at the center of
this tale, "Tóno" Brtko (Jozef Kroner) is basically a good man whose wife and brother-in-law
force to join them in the Nazi takeover of Jewish businesses, the Aryanization
process that proceeded the arrest and deportation the Jews to concentration
camps.
In
fact, as Tono soon discovers, the elderly widow Rozália has no money, and
survives only through the auspices of a Jewish charity group. He also discovers
that the kindly button seller is so hard of hearing and unable to digest the
facts of his “takeover” of her shop, that she welcomes him as a friend who has
simply come to help her out. She soon offers him her dead husband’s suit and
hat.
If
nothing had changed, the situation between the two might have been a perfect
solution. But, obviously, the center cannot hold, as the Jews are rounded up to
be taken away. Tono desperately attempts to protect the uncomprehending
Rozália,
realizing that he, too, is now in danger for being a Jew-lover, who are hated
even more than the Jews themselves. Has his brother-in-law put him into the
position simply to destroy him?
As her Jewish neighbors are called to be
herded into trucks one-by-one, Tono pushes the confused old lady into a closet,
hoping that she will not be discovered.
She
is not called out to join the round-up, but when he goes to retrieve he
discovers that she has died.
His guilt in her death can only be assuaged
in one way, we perceive. Tono hangs himself.
Kadár
has described his profound film as perhaps better representing the terrible
events of 1942 than a large serious epic about the extermination of the Jews.
What we realize throughout this film is that everyone in this provincial
community is guilty, each in their own way.
The director used the real citizens of the
small town of Sabinov, who, he observes, were remarkably ready and professional
to act the roles of the citizens before them. Perhaps in re-telling this
singular tale they felt they were helping to right the crimes so many of their
relatives presumably had so awfully committed.
Los Angeles,
November 10, 2017
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (November
2017).
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