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CLUNY BROWN
1946
Director
Ernst Lubitsch
Starring
Charles Boyer
Jennifer Jones
Peter Lawford
Runtime
100 minutes
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Ernst Lubitsch’s final film encapsulates the most erotic potential of his infamous ‘Lubitsch touch’ in the character of CLUNY BROWN.
Young Cluny, brought up by her plumber uncle, is raised knowing nothing sweeter than the overwhelming satisfaction of unclogging a really congested sink. She dreams of nothing more than pipe, until her rather unusual method of working on them, involving a hammer and a lot of noise, gets her into trouble with the neighbor and her uncle sends her off to become a parlor maid for a wealthy family. In this position Cluny is bored to death and constantly shamed into hiding away her greatest gift and passion, told that she is WAY too into plumbing for a lady. When she encounters the smooth talking Czech philosopher and WWII exile, Adam Belinsky (Charles Boyer), things begin to look up again. Following his battlecry “nuts to the squirrels and squirrels to the nuts” the two outsiders turn the house upside down, finding pleasure in the ecstatic release of Cluny’s yearning for adventure.
Come lay some pipe with us at the Beacon!
“The fact that the young woman’s aggressive sexual desire is presented by way of a plumbing metaphor not only allows for comedy, it also underscores the brutality of the injustice by emphasizing the irrationality of the prohibition. After all, as Adam wonders, why shouldn’t a woman go in for plumbing? To those who believe such taboos ended with open humping on the screen, I say: How many heterosexual men actually welcome forceful, lusty overtures from women?” – Siri Hustvedt
Young Cluny, brought up by her plumber uncle, is raised knowing nothing sweeter than the overwhelming satisfaction of unclogging a really congested sink. She dreams of nothing more than pipe, until her rather unusual method of working on them, involving a hammer and a lot of noise, gets her into trouble with the neighbor and her uncle sends her off to become a parlor maid for a wealthy family. In this position Cluny is bored to death and constantly shamed into hiding away her greatest gift and passion, told that she is WAY too into plumbing for a lady. When she encounters the smooth talking Czech philosopher and WWII exile, Adam Belinsky (Charles Boyer), things begin to look up again. Following his battlecry “nuts to the squirrels and squirrels to the nuts” the two outsiders turn the house upside down, finding pleasure in the ecstatic release of Cluny’s yearning for adventure.
Come lay some pipe with us at the Beacon!
“The fact that the young woman’s aggressive sexual desire is presented by way of a plumbing metaphor not only allows for comedy, it also underscores the brutality of the injustice by emphasizing the irrationality of the prohibition. After all, as Adam wonders, why shouldn’t a woman go in for plumbing? To those who believe such taboos ended with open humping on the screen, I say: How many heterosexual men actually welcome forceful, lusty overtures from women?” – Siri Hustvedt