THE COMFORT BLANKET FILM: THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER

IT’S THE WEEKEND and too wet outside, too hot, too sunny, too windy. I’m too busy, too lazy, too stressed, too chilled. There’s way too much to do, or nowhere near enough. Something, somewhere is making me not want to engage with the outside world. I just need to close the curtains and hunker down with the cinematic equivalent of a mug of tea and a slab of jam sponge.

I’ve been carrying around the same comfort-blanket film, The Shop Around The Corner (Ernst Lubitsch, 1940), since childhood. Part romcom, part sedative and entirely lovely, it stars James Stewart as Alfred Kralik, a gently ambitious and decent sales clerk in a family-run Budapest leather goods store (can you feel your blood pressure dropping yet?) and Margaret Sullavan as the bright and cultured colleague with whom he squabbles daily. The ladies wear fox soles and pinafores and live with their grandmothers, the men wear trilbies and sock-garters and dream of owning pigskin wallets. It’s such a beautifully tiny plot that to reveal much more would be to spoil it (though the twist considerately makes itself known nice and early, so as not to become at all stressful), but suffice to say, you must cancel next Sunday’s plans at once.

Already seen it? That’s never deterred me (frankly, all the better), but you could just as happily choose Casablanca, Gaslight, His Girl Friday, Mildred Pierce, Brief Encounter, All About Eve — all hit a similar spot. You see, the comfort-blanket movie is not to be confused with a wholly pleasurable crap one. We’ve all spent a highly enjoyable afternoon watching cinematic landfill (no judgement — I’ve seen Grease 2 eight times), but the point of comfort-blanket movies is not that they’re bad, but that they’re easy. Unassuming classics that ask little of the viewer, but deliver highquality storytelling one can feel positively virtuous in consuming, satisfied that one’s film vocabulary and reference library are expanding. They handle the senses with care, allow for wallowing in simpler times, in small stories about small people going about their daily business. They must sufficiently engage without requiring such unblinking focus as to impinge on soothing lap-work, like pairing socks, dunking digestives or sorting out the kitchen junk drawer.

The comfort-blanket movie doesn’t necessarily need to be black-and-white, as The Shop Around The Corner is, but it’s certainly true that easy-on-the-eyes monochrome (providing it’s not too thrilling a film noir or any horror movie) adds to the unchallenging, cosy simplicity of the genre. And besides, there’s a particular flavour and cinematic language to films made in the 1940s and early ’50s that makes them the most decadent way to while away an afternoon. The clipped, restrained dialogue, rarely sentimental, almost wholly reliant on its structure and delivery, not on special effects and set-pieces. The ambient crackle of old film, like a warming log fire for the soul. Even the syrupy orchestra music is used sparingly, allowing effortless concentration and perhaps a soothing 40 winks. There are days, perhaps when hungover, when a person does not want live in a modern, 4D, ultra-hd world, but somewhere that’s softer, fuzzier around the edges. Here, the right movie, like the right blanket, has a reassuring feel, a familiar pattern. Wrapping yourself in it permits you, for a little while, to forget about Monday, the office, and a world you can only wish gave you nothing bigger to worry about than the provenance of a new wallet.