Wow..what a tragedy. I enjoyed this very much, but it is such a sad story.

This film gives a voice to the Czech people caught between the inexorable cruelty of Nazism and the human rights of their innocent neighbors. It seems like such an easy choice from our end of the keyboard, but consider Tono's plight and the expected penalties faced by people like him if they chose wrong.

This is some of the best Czech cinema I've seen.

If it weren't set in the shadow of the Holocaust, The Shop on Main Street's premise would be a comedy, and indeed plays like one for most of the runtime. Tono is appointed "Aryan manager" of a Jewish business for which he is ill-qualified, but the old lady who actually runs the store is oblivious to the Nazi occupation, going deaf besides, and thinks he's just there to help her out. She's a pain in his ass, and yet too endearing to send packing, and that's all very well and good until the Fascist Guard come to town to take all the Jews to the camps. Jozef Kroner is great as Tono, doing much without saying a word, never too sympathetic, and yet not unsympathetic either. He's no fascist, it's just a business opportunity. Ida Kaminska puts in a strong performance as the old woman too. And it's all told with an effective slice of life quality, at least until the climax with its brilliant use of the audience's judgment through the camera lens. A dark tale about impossible choices and the corruptive nature of fascism, wrapped in a sort of small town comedy in which you spend time with a community of affecting characters. Some call it gut-wrenching, but I admit I perhaps braced myself for something harder to watch, and so came out of it relatively unscathed.