The Shop on Main Street

Tono Brtko (Jozef Kroner), a timid carpenter in a small town in wartime Slovakia, is handed the title of "Aryan comptroller" over a button shop owned by Rozalie Lautmannová (Ida Kamińska), an elderly Jewish widow. Directors Ján Kadár and Elmar Klos send him in for the salary and the standing it brings, and she, nearly deaf, takes him for a helper. He keeps coming back, and a stubborn friendship forms between the two of them.