The employees gather outside the shop in the morning, waiting for the boss to arrive and let them in, and already a curious sort of time travel begins, memories of what will be this film's future, its remakes and derivatives, among them Are You Being Served? and You've Got Mail. You try to shake these associations off and concentrate on the film itself. This should be easy, because you haven't seen it in a long time. It is easy, because the film is fast and funny and graceful, but you don't leave the world of displacements and associations behind. The film, Ernst Lubitsch's The Shop around the Corner, now completing a run at the BFI, is all about associations and displacements.

LRB 6 January 2011 | PDF Download