The Shop Around the Corner · reception & legacy
1940 · Ernst Lubitsch
How The Shop Around the Corner has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
A modest, well-liked release in 1940 that got somewhat lost amid Stewart's blockbuster run, it has since climbed to 'greatest romantic comedy ever made' status — a Criterion-canonised, critic-beloved jewel of the Lubitsch touch.
What's debated
The perennial fan debate: is it secretly the best Christmas movie — the discerning cinephile's December pick over the usual suspects — or does calling it one undersell it?
Its footprint
Its pen-pals-who-can't-stand-each-other-in-person premise became a durable template — remade as In the Good Old Summertime (1949), turned into the Broadway musical She Loves Me, and updated as You've Got Mail (1998), whose bookstore is literally named 'The Shop Around the Corner' in tribute.
Where it stands
A 'you must have seen this' cornerstone of the rom-com canon and a Letterboxd December ritual, routinely name-checked as Lubitsch's warmest, most human film.