Cluny Brown (1946)
(On Cable TV, December 2021) The obvious reason to see Cluny Brown is that it’s master director Ernst Lubitsch’s last film before his untimely death — the last go-around for “The Lubitsch Touch,” this time taking aim at British social conventions. But the unexpected delight of the film is Jennifer Jones’ performance as the titular Cluny — a bright, scattered young woman who clearly has no intention of learning her place, let alone keeping it. Compared to other Lubitsch pictures, it’s true that Cluny Brown feels like a second-tier result — not bad, still amusing, but clearly not in the same category as his better-known films. Still, it amuses: its look at stuffy British class conventions is clearly meant to upset upper-class British viewers by showing them as so out of touch on vital issues. (British reviewers reportedly weren’t kind to the film.) The romantic shenanigans between Cluny and a foreign intellectual (revered by the British characters, but seen as a mere man by the protagonist) end up making up most of what passes for plot here, although —typically—much of the fun of the picture is in the small details, exchanges and observations rather than the overarching plot. Lubitsch was gone far too soon, but at least we got Cluny Brown before he went.
