Cluny Brown (1946) is kind of strange. It was Ernst Lubitsch's last movie, It is a comedy of manners, but mainly an extended metaphor on plumbing as sex.
It starts with a London bore getting ready for a cocktail party - but his sink is backed up. When Charles Boyer shows up, he mistakes him for the plumber. But he is actually looking for a place to stay and possibly a handout. The actual plumber who shows up is Cluny Brown (Jennifer Jones). She's a lovely daughter of a plumber who just loves working on pipes. Boyer makes her a few martinis, and has her purring like a Persian cat. Then her uncle and guardian (Billy Bevan) shows up, castigates the men for getting her drunk and demands that she learn "her place".
Later, at the cocktail party, we meet Lady Cream (Helen Walker), a fashionable young woman who "never goes to parties". She is being unsuccessfully courted by Peter Lawford and Reginald Gardiner. They stumble upon Boyer, napping in a bedroom, and recognize him as an anti-Nazi Czech author and professor. They profess their loyalty to him and offer to help him hide from his enemies (the setting is between the wars).
Meanwhile, Jones' uncle has decided to place her in service so she can learn her place. She is sent to a rural mansion - but before she arrives, she meets C. Aubrey Smith, a wealthy resident who brings her to the mansion. Her employers mistake her for a guest, and treat her to tea and scones. When they discover that she is the new maid, they politely but firmly put her in her place and forget her.
We discover that this is Peter Lawford's home, and these are his parents. He shows up to say that he is sending Boyer to stay with them, and rushes off. There will also be another houseguest, Walker. So we have all the characters in one big house.
There are a few nice little set pieces here. In one, Boyer comes to Walker's bedroom to convince her that she should be nicer to Lawford. When he won't leave her room, she suspects he has other motives, and he wonders if she may be right. She finally has to scream to get him to leave.
In another, Jones becomes attached to a local chemist, Richard Haydn. He is a nasal-voiced, self-important, narrow-minded provincial. At a small party, he introduces Jones to his mother, Una O'Connor, who only speaks in throat-clearing harrumphs. But when the drains start making noise, Jones can't resist going to fix them. This embarrasses Haydn and O'Connor, making it clear that Jones is an unsuitable match.
Most of this is plain old Lubitschian comedy - except for Cluny Brown. Jones is so strikingly beautiful, and she plays Brown as so full of life and love, that it almost tips the movie upside down. Her joy over plumbing, over martinis, over Haydn, is overwhelming. To see the love in her eyes at every little thing her chemist lover does, from filling a prescription to singing a sentimental song at the organ, is a little ridiculous. But it shows how much love she has in her heart, and also how hard she's trying to find her place.
Of course, the rest of the movie is filled with comic servants, silly lovers, political youths and stuffy rich elders. It would have been fine without Jones. But she takes it to a whole other level.
In conclusion, Cluny's method of fixing plumbing is to whang on the pipes with a big spanner. With plumbing as a metaphor for sex, I don't know what that means.
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