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Ernst Lubitsch - Cluny Brown (1946)

Date: 26 Apr 2008 05:06:00

Ernst Lubitsch - Cluny Brown (1946)
DVDrip | English | Subtitles: FR (optional) | 1:36:18 | 720x544 | 25fps | XviD | MP3 - 128kbps | 1.4 GB

Amateur plumber Cluny Brown (Jennifer Jones) gets sent off by her uncle to work as a servant at an English country estate. While there, she becomes friendly with Adam Belinski (Charles Boyer), a charming Czech refugee. She also becomes interested in a dull shopkeeper named Mr. Wilson. Belinski soon falls in love with Cluny and tries to keep her from marrying Wilson.

Cluny Brown is another charming Ernst Lubitsch satire on the aristocracy and, aided by a wonderful script, Lubitsch fills the story with light (but well-aimed) social observations. While Lubitsch's primary targets are the upper classes, and their ostrich-like approach to the world around them, he is also critical of the provincialism that opts for ignorance and the unquestioning allegiance of servants to a class system that keeps them on the lowest rung. (…)

As always with Lubitsch, there is a steady stream of sexual innuendo, not the least of which is Cluny's fascination with plumbing (she repeatedly boasts of how she loves to "bang the pipes"). This culminates in a wonderful scene in which Cluny's obsession for plumbing shocks her prudish suitor, Wilson, and his friends and family. (…)

The funny lines come fast and with an expertise of delivery that makes them feel impromptu. Among the best: "Where's your sense of adventure? Are you the type of man who puts on his pants before he answers the telephone?" and "When the lower classes start throwing away pound notes, the upper classes better look out." (…)

Only in a Lubitsch film could you find a dapper-looking Charles Boyer being confused for a plumber, and among the other throwaway gags are the recurring sights of Boyer taunting Wilson by ringing his doorbell and running away before detection. (…)

Boyer and Jennifer Jones are fine in the leads, but Cluny is the sort of character that, a decade later, Audrey Hepburn or Leslie Caron would have turned into a more layered personality. Richard Haydn steals most of his scenes as the prissy Wilson, and Una O'Connor gives a terrific turn as his mother in a performance that contains no dialogue, only grunts. AMG review

Cluny Brown (based on the novel by Margery Sharp) was the last film to be completed by Ernst Lubitsch, a director who was adept at satirical and sophisticated comedies. Jennifer Jones started work on this film following the completion of Duel In The Sun but post production problems delayed the release of that film. As a result, Cluny Brown opened six months earlier than Duel. True to Lubitsch form, Cluny Brown was a film that offered deft humor while poking fun at upper class England.

It is a shame that Jennifer Jones only made two comedies (the other being Beat The Devil) in her entire career because she obviously had a knack for comic timing. Her performance in Cluny Brown is seen today by many as her most relaxed and displays none of the neurotic shadings that crept into some of her later films.

IMDB review and DVD description.

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Comedy 1940 DVD-Rip HDTV Classics Art-house