Really Surprised!

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

This was the last film completed by Ernst Lubitsch - he began shooting That Lady In Ermine but died halfway through and it was completed by Otto Preminger - and though not quite up there with the likes of Ninotchka and The Shop Around The Corner it remains a fine movie. I've always had a problem with Jennifer Jones and it's basically the same problem I have with Gloria Grahame, overblown, faux sultriness and the impression that their underwear is soiled; strangely enough both of them were able to manage comedy, Graham in Oklahoma and Jones here. It seems that the movie bombed both in the US and here on its release in 1946 and in retrospect perhaps that was too close to the recent war for fluffy, polished satire (Prevert-Carne' had similar problems with La Port de la nuit the same year, albeit with a fantasy rather than a satire and both titles have now been reassessed). Seen today it's difficult to fault the targets, each hit squarely, and the idea of two nonconformists winding up together and here at least Lubitsch was on well-trodden ground given that Cary Grant and Kate Hepburn had done the same thing in Philip Barry's Holiday which was released in 1938, the year in which Cluny Brown is set. There's strong support from the cameo by C. Aubrey Smith downwards and if, predictably, Peter Lawford is the weakest element there are compensations in the shape of Margaret Bannerman, Reginald Ownen, Reginald Gardiner, Richard Haydn, Una O'Connor and Sara Allgood. For a swansong it's something of a trumpeter swan.

I would put "Desire" ahead of this. He directed some of it. But of movies for which Lubitsch got sole directories credit, this charming tale is my favorite.Charles Boyer is delightful. Richard Haydn is hilarious as the stuffy pharmacist who woos the title character.And as the title character, Jennifer Jones is lovely and very funny, in just the subtle way the script calls for. She was again to show her comic skills in "Beat The Devil." There she is an outright scream. Based on just these two performances, she must be counted as one of screen history's most adroit comediennes -- though her career generally took her in very different directions.The only part of "Cluny Brown" that makes me uncomfortable is the insertion of jokes about Nazism in a comedy. Yes, "To Be Or Not To Be" is built around that but "Cluny Brown" is a softer movie. It is a sort of drawing room comedy with some racy undertones. The plumbing: OK, it was and still is unusual for a woman to be a plumber. But this is about sex and class. (In a way, it is a slighter "Rules of the Game.") I don't care for the meanness in much of Lubitsch. Certainly he was a beautiful craftsman. But no matter how often I watch "Trouble In Paradise," I can't seem to like it."Cluny Brown" is filled with enormously likable characters. Buffoons too, but they aren't evil. It's one-of-a-kind -- and it's very funny and enormously charming.

***SPOILERS*** ***SPOILERS*** This is a little known Jennifer Jones (JJ) film because it has to my knowledge, never been seen on UK television and I have never seen a video of this film in any store or video catalogue.I got mine by bidding on "E-Bay" winning the auction.Fortunatly my VCR takes both US NTSC & British PAL formats.Therefore viewers who have seen JJ play a variety of straight dramatic roles, will be pleasantly surprised by this tour de force comic role of her's.What a pity Selznick did not realise his wife had such comic potential in her later parts.Instead of casting her in say "A Farewell to Arms" (1957), he should have realised comic acting does not require an actress to be of a certain age and he could have put her in latter day Sandra Bullock type roles with great success.Comediennes can age graciously! Viewers who enjoy "Cluny Brown" should also see JJ's other comic role as Gwendolynn Chelm, the congenital liar, in John Huston's "Run With The Devil" (1954.Ernst Lubitsch produced and directed this sparkling comedy satirising English Society, from the remote upper classes, to the fawning middle class to the working class who have to "know their place".Being English I do like a good laugh at my own expense.The reversed snobbery of the Housekeeper Mrs Maile (Sara Allgood) and the Butler Syrette at Carmel Manor, had me in stitches.Charles Boyer playes a dissident intellectual Czech emigre (Adam Belinski), fleeing from Nazi persecution and who is living a hand to mouth existence in London because no-one understands or buys his arcane treatise on philosophy.He has the ability to think laterally and thinks if people want to feed squirrels to the nuts in Hyde Park instead of normally feeding nuts to the squirrels, "who are we to say no"? Jennifer Jones plays the title role with gusto as a plumber's niece who desperately wishes to follow her uncle's career, but Society frowns on such career moves for young ladies.Her uncle Ern (Billy Bevan) "rescues" her from a fate worse than death from the abode of the snobby Hilary Ames after she has fixed his blocked sink before an imminent party in honour of The Honourable Betty Cream (Helen Walker), (what we call in modern parlance a "Sloane Ranger" becuase of the proximity of Sloane Square in London to Knightsbridge/Chelsea - the traditional hunting ground of debutantes.Cluny Brown is packed off by her uncle to Carmel Manor to be a humble maid and again meets Belinski.She is definitely not cut out to be a maid because she has trouble "knowing her place".She very nearly becomes betrothed to Wilson (Richard Haydn), the fawning, mother-fixated character who is the unimaginative local village chemist and who has no ambition whatsoever in life apart from doing exactly the same thing in the same place until the day he dies.I did however like his rendition of "Flow on Sweet Afton" on the harmonium!His mother (Una O'Conner) only communicates by coughing, certainly a novel method!Belinski is obviously enamoured of Cluny and tries to sabotage his rival by irritatingly ringing Wilson's shop bell then walking or hiding away "Outrageous!".The social gaffe comes at a tea party held by Wilson with his mother and friends who are gathered for an important and imminent announcement.Suddenly there is an ominous sound from the other room and it is evident the plumbing needs attention.The temptation is just too much for Cluny.She rolls up her sleeves and fixes Wilson's blocked sink in a "jiffy".Such a ,solicism cannot go unremarked and the party comes to an abrupt end.When Belinski leaves to return to London Cluny rushes to the station to see him off.Before she knows what's happened, she too is on the train with him and has had her symbols of servitude thrown out of the carrige window by him.Belinski then talks of "Madame Belinski" and Cluny then realises he has just proposed "That's the same as Mrs isn't it?".Then Adam has an idea.Instead of writing non-selling philosophical works, he will write a murder mystery entitled "The Nightingale Murder" after a particularly noisy bird that kept him awake at Carmel Manor.The couple now reside in New York and the book is a great success.Evidently Cluny is now pregnant!To keep the family, Adam Belinski has obviously written a sequel "The Nightingale Returns".I enjoyed every frame of this comedy.A Young Peter Lawford plays the heir Andrew Carmel whose idea of stopping Hitler is to write a letter to the London "Times"!His mother explains to her future daughter in law that "English gardens have to be planned three years ahead", so she knew where her future duty lay.C Aubrey Smith plays his usual Hollywood colonel role as friend of the Carmel family.Delightful.

You feel the Lubitsch touch many times along the movie but it doesn't work very well. There are funny situations, funny dialogues but it never takes the shape of some wild comedies Lubitsch directed before.What's lacking?A good plot. There was a good idea but the movie gets stuck in an english manor.Charles Boyer plays a character who doesn't deserve the leading role. This Czech writer is a scrounger and quite a smooth-tongued coward.Jennifer Jones plays ingénue Cluny Brown, a girl with a naive aspiration for 'her place'.So different, so close. Well there was a development in The Shop Around the Corner. Here the development is flat and the happy pair has little to arouse emotion.Too many funny situations are based on the english composure. That's a bit light for a whole comedy. But Lubitsch gave us comedies with lots of laughs and fun which largely make up for that minor ultimate opus.