A masterpiece of understatement, this is a tragicomedy that develops into a powerful account of fascism and individual responsibility. In a sleepy Slovak town in 1942, a down-on-his-luck carpenter, Tono (Jozef Kroner), is offered a chance to be Somebody: he accepts the position of "Aryan controller" of a Jewish button shop. His wife is convinced that a fortune lies hidden in the dusty shelves of the tiny shop, but all Tono finds is the elderly proprietor, Rosalie Lautmann (Ida Kaminska), bankrupt, nearly deaf, and seemingly unaware of the German occupation and its threat to her. She assumes that Tono has come to help out and he goes along with the charade until circumstances no longer allow him the luxury of (self-)deception. Kadar and Klos point out that their parable of human conscience "could be transported to a Negro woman in Alabama or a woman awaiting deportation to Siberia in Stalinist Russia, but why should we go outside our own country?" As it was, the film met with accusations of "covert Zionism." The Shop on Main Street was the first film from Eastern Europe to win an Oscar.