Product Description

Spain released, PAL/Region 2 DVD:it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ),Spanish ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ),Spanish ( Subtitles ),SPECIAL FEATURES: Interactive Menu,SYNOPSIS: The time is just prior to World War II. Lovely Cluny Brown (Jennifer Jones) is the niece of a London plumber; when her uncle is indisposed, Cluny rolls up her sleeves and takes a plumbing job at a society home, where she meets a handsome refugee Czech author (Charles Boyer). Hoping to advance herself socially, Cluny accepts a position as a maid in a fancy country home, where she once more meets the Czech author, who is a house guest. Though romanced by the wealthy but mother-dominated owner of the estate (Richard Haydn), Cluny chooses love over security and weds the impoverished author. Cluny Brown is directed by the matchless Ernst Lubitsch.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #143071 in DVD
• Formats: Import, PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 97 minutes

Features

• THIS DVD WILL NOT WORK ON STANDARD US DVD PLAYER

Customer Reviews

correct movie description
The only review on this page is incorrect when describing the storyline of this film. I've actually watched the film and it is about a plumber's niece (Jennifer Jones) who takes matters into her own hands when her uncle cannot take a call. She meets the very poor but fascinating author (Charles Boyer) who has escaped capture by the Nazis who have marched upon his native country. Cluny's uncle thinks she is influenced by too many social desires and, in an effort to keep her in her place, sends her to serve a wealthy family outside of London. Once there, she meets the author again as he is a houseguest. Cluny also meets a fairly well-to-do chemist in the nearest town who woos her but is subject to his aging mother's opinion. Needless to say, because this is a comedy, Cluny and the professor/author fall in love and form a new life in America. The story is incredibly sweet and endearing. I have introduced this movie to as many people as I possibly could. I hope this helps coming from someone who knows the movie by heart.

cluny brown - the question of accent
A charming film in some ways, with some characteristic cameos & subordinate roles. But oh dear, what is the explanation of the heroine's American accent, when her uncle is a cockney plumber? Jennifer Jones makes almost no effort to conceal her country of origin (or the fancy makeup she claims she's not wearing). Helen Walker is excellent (good accent) as the blasé aristocrat, Richard Haydn ditto as the prune-faced chemist, but I spent the film wondering about the problem alluded to above and whether, if Cluny Brown had had a London twang, the donnée of the script would have been possible at all, since the misunderstandings at the beginning about her class status could not have occurred. In the novel, I believe, her social class is evident, and the implicit problem more her sexual attractiveness, very underplayed in the film except at the beginning when she is drunk. The film's play on "displacement" is thus somewhat awkwardly exemplified by this gap in credibility - when we see her at the end strolling on 5th Ave. she seems like a fish finally back in the water...I love Charles Boyer's performance - if only he had ended up with the more convincing character of Betty Cream.

Nicely quaint and socially iconoclastic
That's a funny comedy that takes England as the target of its humor, the England of 1938 and what's more the aristocracy and their twisted class relations with their servants. It is humorous by the way it shows how an Eastern European can easily trap the aristocrats in 1938 with the sound of Prague, some good manners and a little bit of anti-nazism. That Adam Belinski is able to charm these English aristocrats, especially the son who wants to go and fight against Hitler, and his parents who do not even ask a question, or hardly. That Czech refugee is able to live on that noble family for a while before leaving for America along with the maid who arrived the same day as him and he had met in London before. The comedy is funny because that girl, who is not an aristocrat, far from it, does all the mistakes you can imagine English etiquette is going to frown upon severely. She pretends to be a plumber and she repairs some toilet or washstand in a jiffy in front of a middleclass family, their guests and the pharmacist who was getting enamored. The result is the departure of all the guests, after the departure of the pharmacist's mother, and then she is practically rejected. She does not know what class differences are. She will of course be captured by the Czech refugee and taken to America where he is going to become a popular writer and she will finally be away from silly class distinctions. It is funnily absurd and the Lord and his Lady are just passé and old-fashioned, quaint is probably the word if we want to remain nice. Lubitsch takes great pleasure at showing how silly such class-distinctions are. The whole comedy is more humorous than really funny and that humor always remains polite, even at times mundane, though in the light American way.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID