I have no idea if anyone has noticed this before, but the snow at the end is obviously not snow, but feathers. It even sticks to the coats like feathers would. They obviously hadn't perfected movie snow in 1940. Has anobody noticed this?
I just saw the restored blu-ray and maybe this wasn't evident in any of the other editions, like on the DVD. The film looks pristine on blu-ray. The movie itself is of course, a classic.
I just streamed it on HBO Max and didn't notice anything peculiar about the snow, but then again I wasn't examining it that closely. However, while I've heard of a number of things being used for fake snow in old movies, I've never heard of feathers being used.
This article perhaps will be of interest:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/crazy-tricks-early-filmmakers-used-fake-snow-180961522/
Cool article, thank you. Interesting to read about what materials they used to make snow.
In the great film Day for Night (1973) - Truffaut used, as the drector of the film within the film, a foam machine to make snow.
Whenever I see snow in a movie now, I always imagine the filmmakers had to use a foam-machine beforehand. Although this might be an older technique.
I'm pretty sure it looked like feathers in Shop Around the Corner, but ho knows if it was something else. Certainly didn't look like cornflakes painted white! :)
In relation to what you said in the original post, I did notice that the article mentioned that It's a Wonderful Life used "fake snow made out of foamite (the material used in fire extinguishers) mixed with sugar, water and soap flakes" and that "the artificial snow even clung convincingly to clothing and created picture-perfect footprints." So maybe The Shop Around the Corner used the same thing, or something very similar.
It's always interesting to read about the various ways that Hollywood has come up with to fool us and make un-reality appear very real.
Perhaps, yeah.
It's interesting. One time in the future I'm convinced we'll find out the answer.
In any case, I just watched the movie for the first time last night and was quite impressed with it. I knew nothing about it and it ended up being one of the best movies I've seen in recent memory.
shareYep, another James Stewart jewel.
shareWe've watched it every year for a LONG TIME now. LOL I can't plumb the depths of memory to decide when we started. It's part of a list of classics we watch every Christmas season. I'm delighted people are still finding and enjoying this great movie. :-)
shareI believe I just found it by browsing around on HBO Max. But I like Jimmy Stewart, and so as soon as I saw him in it I was interested. I did some research and found it listed on some "Best Christmas Movies" lists.
Not sure if this would be of interest to you, but many decades ago there was something called Lux Radio Theater, which would take popular Hollywood movies and produce one-hour radio adaptations of them. They did an adaptation of The Shop Around the Corner in 1941. You can find it here:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pn3TixB4yyA