Movie Monday: Cluny Brown

 

Movie Monday: Cluny Brown

“A free-spirited parlor maid and a Czech refugee surprise

an English village with their unconventional ways.”

~IMDb~

German American director Ernst Lubitsch was known and well-respected in Hollywood for his “comedy of manners” films – satirical comedies that question and comment upon the manners and social customs of a sophisticated, artificial society (Wikipedia) much like Jane Austen did with her novels. Cluny Brown is Lubitsch’s final film, and it’s a classic screwball comedy. Two sources referred to it as effervescent, a great description.

The movie features Jennifer Jones, a prolific actress who has been largely forgotten, as Cluny Brown, and Charles Boyer as Adam Belinski, a political refugee. Cluny’s uncle is not happy with her unladylike behaviors and arranges for her to work as a parlor maid in the country house of Sir Henry Carmel. It’s not long before she is attracted to Belinski, but she difficulties abound because

she is already seeing someone – a “stuffy chemist.” All sorts of shenanigans occur, including a scene during which Cluny fixes the plumbing at her boyfriend’s house, horrifying his mother, a social diva. More confusion and chaos before she gets her happily ever after with Adam.

Cluny Brown is based on the novel by English novelist Margery Sharp who also wrote The Rescuers.
An author of more than two dozen adult novels, fourteen children’s books, four plays, two mysteries, and many short stories, Margery got her start with pieces in Punch, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Bazaar and Ladies’ Home Journal. Cluny Brown was written in 1944 while she was working as an Army Education Lecturer.

Many of the actors in the film made the transition from stage or silent movies to “talkies,” and by the mid 1940s were doing well as character actors: Reginald Owens, C. Aubrey Smith, Ernest Cossart, Florence Bates, and Una O’Connor. The movie also stars a very young Peter Lawford. Critics gave high praise such as the New York Times that said, “a delectable and sprightly lampoon,” and “among the year’s most delightful comedies.” Variety was equally complimentary with “Cluny Brown is in the best Lubitsch tradition of subtle, punchy comedy, and his two stars make the most of it. It is a satire on British manners, with bite and relish.”

Have you seen this classic?

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Eye of the Beholder: An Apron Strings Tea Tale (Releasing June 30, 2026)

Shunned for his appearance, a disfigured veteran encounters acceptance and love where he least expects it.

Left with physical and emotional scars after the Great War, Hank Drake has been shunned by polite society as the Ugly Duckling. Fine by him. He’d much rather be alone. Until he meets the kind proprietress of a tea stand at New York’s World’s Fair who isn’t repulsed by his appearance. Can he hope for acceptance…or even love?

Grace Sutton has no interest in marrying and is tired of her parent’s snide comments that she’s still single on the eve of her 40th birthday. After she loses her job thanks to budget cuts, she decides it’s time to follow her dream of feeding others. Armed with Mrs. Canfield’s cookbook, she opens a refreshment stand at the World’s Fair unaware how one man will turn her life upside down and upset the apple…er, tea cart.

Pre-Order Link: https://amzn.to/3Pz88KO

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluny_Brown
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038419/
https://www.criterion.com/films/28564-cluny-brown
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/cluny-brown-1946

Photo Credits:

Movie Poster: Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12521988

Movie Still 1: Twentieth Century Fox

Movie Still 2: Twentieth Century Fox

Movie Monday: Confidential Agent

Movie Monday: Confidential Agent

Based on the Graham Greene novel of the same name, Confidential Agent was released in November, 1945 and stars Charles Boyer, Lauren Bacall, and Peter Lorre. According to Greene’s autobiography, Ways of Escape, he wrote the manuscript in six weeks after determining that to be successful, he needed to “write another entertainment” to provide for his family. He also stated that he used Benzedrine (brand name for amphetamines) twice a day to increase his writing pace.

Having just come back from Mexico, Graham wrote the plot around the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). You’d think Hollywood have had enough of war movies, but they jumped on the publication. The screenplay was written by Robert Buckner and stays true to the novel.

Boyer, who by this time had starred in dozens of movies, including silent films in the 1920s, played a

former concert pianist and composer who travels to England as a confidential agent of Spanish Republicans to purchase coal or deny it to the Fascist rebels. On the ocean crossing, he meets a “bored, rich girl” and daughter of the man which whom he’ll be negotiating, played by Lauren Bacall in only her third movie.

The characters miss their train and decide to travel together by car. Their journey is fraught with foibles and danger, and the pair eventually get separated before coming back together for their happily ever after.

Reviews of the movie are mixed, with one site commenting that “Boyer conveys more than a touch of Denard’s world-weariness, but the character is much less anxious and despairing than he is in the novel. Bacall’s performance was panned across the board, giving an “awful performance—playing a bored English aristocrat with a flat New York accent and a voice devoid of inflection. The actress would later say in an interview, “To case me as an aristocratic English girl was more than a stretch. It was dementia.” Lorres does his usual masterful job of playing a villain.

Despite the poor reviews and slow pace, I enjoyed the movie and think it’s worth watching. I learned a bit about the Spanish Civil War, and it was fun to see Lauren Bacall in the early days of her career. I never tire of watching Peter Lorre.

Have you seen this classic?

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A Lesson in Love

He thinks he’s too old. She thinks she’s too young. Can these teachers learn that love defies all boundaries?

Born and raised in London, Isobel Turvine knows nothing about farming, but after most of the students in her school evacuate during Operation Pied Piper, she’s left with little to do. Then her friend Margery talks her into joining the Women’s Land Army, and she finds herself working the land at a manor home in Yorkshire that’s been converted to a boys’ school. A teacher at heart, she is drawn to the lads, but the handsome yet stiff-necked headmaster wants her to stick to farming.

Left with an arm that barely works from the last “war to end all wars,” Gavin Emerson agrees to take on the job of headmaster when his school moves from London to Yorkshire, but he’s saddled with the quirky manor owner, bickering among his teachers, and a gaggle of Land Army girls who have turned the grounds into a farm. When the group’s blue-eyed, raven-haired leader nearly runs him down in a car, he admonishes her to stay in the fields, but they are thrown together at every turn. Can he trust her not to break his heart?

Purchase Link: https://amzn.to/3YHgUb0

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confidential_Agent (movie)
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0037610/
https://www.cineaste.com/summer2011/from-the-archives-confidential-agent
https://www.tcm.com/watchtcm/titles/1870
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Confidential_Agent (novel)

Photo credits:

Movie poster: Warner Brothers

Movie Still: Warner Brothers