Directed by Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos, The Shop on Main Street (1965) is an Academy Award winning Czechoslovak drama set during World War II. Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, the movie follows an ordinary man appointed as the Aryan controller of a small Jewish shop, exposing moral cowardice and complicity under fascism. Through intimate character study and social observation, it remains a landmark of European humanist cinema.

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing Edmund Burke

Winner of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Feature in 1965, Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos THE SHOP ON THE HIGH STREET is one of the cornerstones of World Cinema, and perhaps the most internationally renowned film of the Czech New Wave.

Antonin Tono Brtko is a poor carpenter appointed by his Nazi brother-in-law to be Aryan controller of an old Jewish widow s sewing shop in a Nazi-occupied Slovakian town in 1942. The widow, Rozalie (Yiddish theatre legend Idá Kaminská, nominated here for a Best Actress Oscar for her performance) is near deaf, isolated and partially sighted. Barely even registering there is a war going on, she fails to fully realize the implications of the context in which she lives. Believing Tono is simply her new assistant, the two develop a tentative friendship that sees him maintaining that fiction as he attempts to protect her from the encroaching Nazi horror.

Moving effortlessly from drama to humour to tragedy, THE SHOP ON THE HIGH STREET is a complex political morality tale of common lives disturbed and destroyed by war. A story of loyalty, betrayal, cowardice and heroism, it is a scathing exploration of how minor compromises can lead to complicity in the horrors of a totalitarian regime. It asks every spectator: If it had been you, what would you have done?

Från IMDB:
A carpenter in the Fas