my favorite movies of 1965:

The Shop on Main Street

[Slovak: Obchod na Korze]

(Jozef Kroner, Ida Kamińska, Hana Slivková, František Zvarík, Martin Gregor, Martin Hollý, Sr. Directed by Ján Kadár, Elmar Klos.)

This movie from Czechoslovakia won the Oscar for what’s now called Best International Feature Film. Criterion sums it up:

An inept Slovak peasant is torn between greed and guilt when the Nazi-backed bosses of his town appoint him “Aryan controller” of an old Jewish widow’s button shop. Humor and tragedy fuse in this scathing exploration of one cowardly man’s complicity in the horrors of a totalitarian regime.

Stream it on the Criterion Channel or Max. If you don’t subscribe to the Criterion Channel, try a free 14-day trial. Or you can buy the Criterion DVD (no blu-ray) in the Barnes & Noble 50% sale on all Criterion movies for the rest of July 2021 (and Amazon has been reducing some prices in response).

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.