The Critics' Corner on THE SHOP AROUND THE CORNER

The New York Sun was taken with the universality of the film's story. The shop in Budapest, said the critic, "might just as well be in New York or Middleton."

The New York Times was taken with Ernst Lubitsch's "deft and tender management," even though James Stewart "hardly could be called the Budapest type."

Variety hailed The Shop Around the Corner as a production that "carries the indelible stamp of (Ernst) Lubitsch at his best in generating humor and human interest from what might appear to be unimportant situations."

The Hollywood Reporter predicted that MGM "has another hit and Lubitsch another triumph."

The New York Daily Mirror wrote, "The Shop Around the Corner is the best picture in town. It is gay and light and beautiful and as sparkling as the foam atop a glass of Pilsner."

Time magazine film critic Richard Corliss later said of the film, "The famed Lubitsch touch is here more of a caress."

Film critic Andrew Sarris later wrote of James Stewart's unique appeal as an actor by citing the scene in The Shop Around the Corner where Stewart watches Margaret Sullavan open a letter of apology from her suitor (which is actually Stewart): "It is a dangerously delicate moment, as it is Stewart who has been the correspondent all along. We know it and Stewart knows it but Sullavan doesn't know it, and it would have been very tempting for a flickering triumphant expression to have passed over Stewart's face, but instead an intensely sweet and compassionate and appreciative look transfigures the entire scene into one of the most memorable occurrences in the history of cinema...I could not think of any other actor who could have achieved an effect of such unobtrusive subtlety."

Fifty years after its initial release, The New Yorker called The Shop Around the Corner "the consummate movie about courtship..."

In his review of The Shop Around the Corner for Guide for the Film Fanatic, Danny Peary wrote, "this is Lubitsch's gentlest, most chaste (there's only one kiss) comedy, one in which he was more interested in revealing the humanity of his characters...than in sexual innuendo. And we fall in love with the people at Matuschek's, as individuals and as a family, much like the acting troupe in Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be. Samson Raphaelson wrote the script, which has some of the screen's finest comedic dialogue, and some of its sweetest moments."

Awards & Honors

The Shop Around the Corner earned a spot on the National Film Registry in 1999.

by Scott McGee and Jeff Stafford