Cluny Brown (1946)
Written by Samuel Hoffenstein and Elizabeth Reinhardt
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
During the Hays Code era, Lubitsch had his ups and downs. I think The Shop Around the Corner and To Be Or Not To Be are certainly highlights. I can’t say I was quite as fond of Ninotchka or Heaven Can Wait, though. His final completed film before his sudden death from a heart attack in 1947 was this rather underrated gem. I hadn’t seen Cluny Brown come up in any conversations about his work and I would argue it’s a reminder of how forward thinking the director could be given the right script. What we have is a movie that pushes back on gender norms as well as cynicism that seems to have taken root in a pretty awful way in contemporary media.
Cluny Brown (Jennifer Jones) is an American living in England in 1938 with her aunt & uncle. She’s got quite the talent for plumbing and is sent over to fix an issue for a London intellectual who is about to host a party. There she meets Adam Belinksi (Charles Boyer) who has come to visit the professor who typically lives at this apartment, but finds his friend is away and lends it out. Adam is quite taken by Cluny who departs after the job is done. He’s invited to stay for the party and is recognized by some young attendees as a famous anti-Nazi author and professor living in exile. One young man, Andrew (Peter Lawford) invites Adam to his family’s estate in the country.
Meanwhile, Cluny’s uncle is upset about her “unladylike” behavior and sends her to work as a maid for Sir & Lady Carmel in the English countryside. Cluny is immediately seen as “out of line” by the veteran servants and treated quite poorly. However, things turn around when the Carmels’ son, Andrew, arrives home with his special guest. Adam is reunited with that fascinating plumber woman and their friendship blossoms. It’s not that simple, though, as Cluny is courted by local chemist Jonathan, but he finds her interests not suitable for a woman who could be his wife. Cluny finds herself wondering if she should change to make the people around her happier.
Cluny Brown feels like a movie that was so incredibly ahead of its time. The main message here is squarely about society’s expectations of women and how those expectations are bullshit. Each person is good at different things and should not be inhibited by their gender or sex. As this was released just after the conclusion of World War II, it was clearly making comment on the changing roles of women. During the war, with the men off on the frontlines, U.S. women took up jobs in factories and similar work often associated with men. Many of these women were quite good at this type of labor, but when the men started coming home there was immense social pressure for these women to only be domestics.
If a woman enjoys being a domestic there’s nothing wrong with that, but to relegate the entire group to one form of labor is not just inhibiting the individual but also the society. If we want the best plumbers, electricians, carpenters, etc. we can’t simply pull from a pool limited because of a person’s reproductive organs or gender presentation. The result will be so much wasted talent that causes society to be unnecessarily held back.
The character of Cluny doesn’t possess a single ounce of guile or hate towards anyone. She is just a natural at plumbing and doesn’t understand why she’s chastised for fixing things. I actually see a lot of neurodivergence in the character because this is clearly a special interest of hers, we see Cluny stimming from doing a good job, but then also an intense need to be accepted by those around her. She knows she’s different and does her best to mask & conform, but in the end she has to be herself. This in turn makes Adam such a fantastic character as he tells Cluny the only thing he wants for her is for her to be happy doing what she loves. Damn the rest of the world.
Cluny Brown also concluded Lubitsch’s career-long love of language. A bit of colloquial phrasing about squirrels and nuts plays a vital role in several comedic sequences. Characters banter in the classic Hollywood manner that all great screwball comedies provide. Yet, there are fantastic moments without words that convey great comedy through their silence. A simple 10-second shot of Adam opening and closing a pharmacy door is a wonderful punctuation mark on his rivalry with another character. It’s so simple but immensely effective.
Like most Lubitsch films the characters here are cartoonish in an endearing way. The only people he passes judgment on are those who cruelly judge others. The characters who have a love of some aspect of life may be silly or clumsy, but never bad or wrong. But even the pompous ones aren’t written off as mindless villains. The script is intent on humanizing everyone and it doesn’t matter if someone who said something cruel was severely punished. Punishment isn’t the point, rather it’s to lift up people and their passions. The movie’s grand conclusion on the train to London underlines that by forgetting the crap Cluny has gone through and focusing on the fact she’s found someone who loves her in the most authentic way possible.
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