"'As for human comedy,' wrote Lubitsch in 1947, 'I think I never was as good as in Shop Around the Corner. Never did I make a picture in which the atmosphere and the characters were truer than in this picture.' Although his art is often described in terms of social satire, verbal wit and elegant mise-en-scène, Lubitsch was himself an actor once, so much in love with its honorable pretense that it became one of his favorite subjects. What makes the love story here so intelligent and touching is the very way in which the lovers confuse their ideal, role-playing sense of themselves with the reality. Caught up in parts, they cannot easily recognize their natural partners.
"The shop in Budapest is a sufficient world, full of instinctive familiarity and sublime misunderstandings; its natural comedy is all the greater in that no 'comedian' is in the cast. Under Lubitsch's warm and fair eye for the group, Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart become remarkably unstarry, subject to error, pride and foolishness, as endearing as, but in no way superior to or more glamorous than their supposed supporters. Lubitsch brought a key realization to American comedy--best appreciated by Preston Sturges--that smaller roles must exist in the same light of humor as the larger ones. Thus, Felix Bressart, Frank Morgan, Joseph Schildkraut and William Tracy--cameos as appealing as anything sold at Matuschek's--are full human beings, exquisite 'turns' that never disturb the harmonious ensemble of that little shop of romantic worriers." David Thomson