The Shop Around the Corner (1940)

This movie is about a man, Alfred Kralik, who works as a sales clerk in a boutique. One day a woman, Klara Novak, comes in asking for a job, and he tells her that there aren't any available positions. However, that very same day the owner of the store orders this cheap, impractical, musical cigar box, and Alfred said that no one would want to buy them. Klara successfully sells one of these cigar boxes and is hired. Klara and Alfred have not been getting along together at work, both thinking that the other is haughty or pretentious based on that first encounter.

One day, the boss decides that the window display of the store is old and ineffective, so decides that everyone will have to stay after work to change it. Unfortunately both Klara and Alfred need the night off. They've both been exchanging letters with strangers, strangers that seem to be their ideal partners, and they both happen to be meeting their pen pal that very night. Klara succeeds in getting the night off, but when Alfred asks his boss if he could leave early, he ends up getting fired! Feeling very down, he and his friend go to check out what his pen pal looks like, as he's thinking of marrying this girl. He didn't want to go in to meet her, now that he'd lost his job and had no way to support her. His friend looks in the window and tells him that the woman waiting for him looks like Klara, and it turns out that it is Klara. He goes in to talk to her and after a good deal of talking, and a little taunting on his part, she ends up insulting him, and he leaves her be.

Back at the shop, the boutique owner, Mr. Matsuchek, hired a private investigator to find out who his wife was sleeping with (he thought before that it was Alfred). He is about to kill himself when one of his delivery boys walks in and stops him. Mr. Matsuchek begins to recover and gives Alfred his job back, making him the manager of the store. Alfred begins getting close to Klara again, knowing that she was the one whose letters he fell in love with. Will he ever reveal himself to her? And will she still love him when she knows who her mystery pen pal is?!

This movie is the original 'You've Got Mail'. There was another movie along the same lines with Judy Garland called 'In the Good Old Summertime' if you're a fan of the storyline, which seems to be timeless. This movie is sweet, but practically so. The characters don't really go out of their way to be together. I don't know that I felt much of a connection between Stewart and Sullivan, the spent most of the film at odds and not that much time in love. I wouldn't say that it's one of the most romantic movies ever made, but it's a charming film sure to please!