Shop On Main Street - Criterion Collection

An inept Czech peasant is torn between greed and guilt when the Nazi-backed bosses of his town appoint him Aryan controller of an old Jewish widows button shop. Humor and tragedy fuse in this scathing exploration of one cowardly mans complicity in the horrors of a totalitarian regime. Made near the height of Soviet oppression in Czechoslovakia, The Shop on Main Street features intense editing and camera work which won it the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film in 1965.