You Better Shop Around

I was reading this Michael Wood essay on one of my favorite films, The Shop Around The Corner, in the London Review Of Books when I came across this:

The plot turns almost ugly when [Jimmy] Stewart [who plays the clerk Alfred Kralik] learns [the] identity [of co-star Margaret Sullavan who plays co-worker Klara Novak] but doesn’t give his away. He shows up for the rendezvous the timid correspondents have finally managed to arrange – it’s in a café; he wears a carnation, she carries a copy of Anna Karenina – and asks a friend to peer through the window for him and tell him what he sees. [....] This piece of immortal dialogue ensues. ‘If you don’t like Miss Novak, I can tell you right now you won’t like that girl.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because that girl is Miss Novak.’

If it seems unfair that Stewart should now be allowed to go into the café and bait Sullavan, she certainly repays him by getting so cross that he should be standing in the way of the man she’s waiting for.

I've heard other people claim Stewart is a little too mean to Sullavan, and spends the rest of the film toying with her before he reveals his true identity. But I think this misses the point of the well-wrought screenplay.

Here's the opening dialogue as they meet in the cafe:

Stewart:  Hello, Miss Novak.
Sullavan: Good evening, Mr. Kralik.
Stewart: It's quite a coincidence. I had an appointment here, too. You haven't seen Mr. Pirovitch by chance?
Sullavan: No, no, I haven't.
Stewart: All right. Well, I think I'll wait. Do you mind if I sit down?
Sullvand: Yes, I do. You know, I have an appointment, too, Mr. Kralik.
Stewart: Oh, yes, I remember. Yes. My, your friend seems to be a little late.
Sullavan: And I'll thank you not to be sarcastic. I know you've had a bad day, and you feel very bitter. Still, that's no reason...
Stewart: Bitter? Me? About leaving Matuschek and Company? When I got home and sat at the phone...in five minutes I had what amounts to two offers.
Sullavan: I congratulate you. I wish you good luck.
Stewart: I see you're reading Tolstoy's Anna Karenina.
Sullavan: Yes, do you mind?
Stewart: No, no, I just didn't expect to meet you in a café...with Tolstoy, that's all. It's quite a surprise. I didn't know you cared for high literature.
Sullavan: There are many things you don't know about me, Mr. Kralik.
Stewart: Have you read Crime and Punishment by Dostoyevsky?
Sullavan: No, I haven't.
Stewart: I have. There are many things you don't know about me, Miss Novak. As a matter of fact...there might be a lot we don't know about each other. People seldom go to the trouble of scratching the surface of things...to find the inner truth.
Sullavan: I really wouldn't care to scratch your surface, Mr. Kralik...because I know exactly what I'd find. Instead of a heart, a handbag. Instead of a soul, a suitcase. And instead of an intellect, a cigarette lighter which doesn't work.
Stewart: That's very nicely put. Yes. Comparing my intellect with a cigarette lighter that doesn't work. Yeah, that's a very interesting mixture of poetry and meanness.
Sullavan: Meanness? Let me...
Stewart: Don't misunderstand me. I'm only trying to pay you a compliment.
Sullavan: Mr. Kralik, please! I told you I was expecting somebody.

The point of this scene (which goes on with more insults) is Stewart has been shocked to discover the pesky girl from the shop is actually the one with whom he's been corresponding.  This was to be their big night, where they'd finally meet, though it was broken up a bit by Stewart getting fired.  So Stewart is a little dismayed--he almost walks away, but decides to come back to see if he can make something of this fiasco.  Down deep, he realizes this is the girl for him, and he's got to ease into it to not lose her. If he just comes in and announces guess what, I'm the guy you've been dreaming of for months, yet I'm also the guy at the workplace you can't stand, and who just got fired, she might not be able to take it.  Going off on the wrong foot could lose a relationship Stewart understands is worth saving.

So he takes an oblique approach.  First there are a few social amenities, followed by his putting her mind at ease about his job (even though he's lying--this is so they can talk more about their feelings and not about his misery, but also because if she were cruel while thinking he's fired her character would be unredeemable). Then he looks for a conversational gambit to allow him to break to her who he really is.  Relatively soon, he hits on it--he'll use the fact she reads great literature to bring up the concept that people aren't always what you expect.  This will allow him to gently explain that he's not what he seems on the surface.  In fact, he's been corresponding with a wonderful woman for some time now, and they're falling in love.  And what he seems to be back at the shop doesn't truly represent him.  He knows that she is a wonderful person and he hopes that she can forgive how he's sometimes appeared and they can get under the surface and understand each other.

But almost before he starts he fails.  She is understandably nervous and annoyed at Kralik. She has enough to put up with him at the shop, and now he's bugging her here, on this biggest of all nights?  Kralik is somewhat aware of this, but he's got to broach the subject somehow.  However, as soon as he offers her an opening to talk about how people may fool you, her annoyance flares up and she starts insulting him.  Very quickly they've reached the point of no return.  She ends up calling him an "insignificant little clerk," and Kralik--who still believes he's fired--realizes now is not the time to reveal himself.  He now adapts a long-term strategy, where he'll bide his time, write a few more letters, and finally destroy her illusions about her pen pal as he introduces himself back into her life.

Altogether, it's an exquisitely written roundelay, keeping the lovers apart yet allowing them to get back together.  I don't think playing it another way would work.

PS  Here's a nice article dealing with the above scene (comparing it to the same moment in You've Got Mail) and here's a pretty cool analysis of Jimmy Stewart in the movie overall.