Downton<\/em>\u2019s full-on nostalgia for the rigid class system of British society in the early 20th century is part of its charm, and it\u2019s presented in such a gentle, welcoming manner that it\u2019s hard to dislike. When Lady Mary (Michelle Dockery) thanks her lady\u2019s maid Anna (Joanne Froggatt) for being such a good friend to her, and Anna responds that she likes to think that they\u2019re good friends to each other, it\u2019s a warm bonding moment, a culmination of the journey that the characters have been on together over the course of six seasons and a movie (and 15 years of in-continuity time). It\u2019s just best not to think about how much obscene wealth and privilege Lady Mary and her family have compared to Anna and her valet husband Bates (Brendan Coyle). Lady Mary\u2019s children and Anna and Bates\u2019 son will grow up in the same house, but not in the same world.<\/p>\n Set in 1938 (11 years after Downton Abbey<\/em>), Cluny Brown<\/em> starts in London, where the naively free-spirited Cluny embarrasses her Uncle Arn (Billy Bevan) for the last time, prompting him to ship her off for a job as a parlor maid at Friars Carmel Manor in the country. Cluny\u2019s great sin is, as Uncle Arn puts it, not knowing her place, and nearly everyone around her is obsessed with propriety, while Cluny wants only to indulge in her abiding passion for plumbing, which she\u2019s inherited from Uncle Arn himself. It\u2019s a demonstration of the movie\u2019s sly wit (from Lubitsch, screenwriters Samuel Hoffenstein and Elizabeth Reinhardt, and author Margery Sharp, who wrote the source novel) that the transgression that most often gets Cluny in trouble is her solidly working-class interest in fixing pipes, which is considered highly inappropriate for a young woman (but would be a respectable trade if she were a man, like Uncle Arn).<\/p>\n At Friars Carmel, Cluny violates class boundaries early and often, arriving in the car of a rich neighbor whom she befriended on the train and being served tea by Lord and Lady Carmel (Reginald Owen and Margaret Bannerman) before they realize that she\u2019s the new maid and not a distinguished guest. The Carmels are less scandalized by Cluny\u2019s behavior than are their head servants, butler Mr. Syrette (Ernest Cossart) and housekeeper Mrs. Maile (Sara Allgood). The equivalent of Downton\u2019s Mr. Carson (Jim Carter) and Mrs. Hughes (Phyllis Logan), Mr. Syrette and Mrs. Maile are dedicated adherents to the class structure, and they resent the blithe ease with which Cluny breaks the rules and yet remains employed. The sunny Cluny bears no ill will toward anyone in the manor, but she also can\u2019t help being her friendly, enthusiastic self, whether that means offering to fix the sink at a birthday party for her uptight would-be beau\u2019s mother, or accepting the offer of tea and crumpets from the lord and lady of the house.<\/p>\n Cluny\u2019s only real ally is Czech intellectual Adam Belinski (Charles Boyer), who\u2019s a guest at Friars Carmel courtesy of heir Andrew Carmel (Peter Lawford). A subversive writer, Belinski is on the run from the Nazis (although he doesn\u2019t seem too concerned about it), and one of the movie\u2019s main themes is the way that the rich are oblivious to the rising threat of fascism. Wars are just minor inconveniences for people like the Carmels and the Crawleys, who once turned their estate into a convalescent home for injured soldiers during World War I, a period that Cora Crawley (Elizabeth McGovern) looks back on as a warm memory in the Downton<\/em> movie. In Cluny Brown<\/em>, the lack of concern over the Third Reich is an indictment of upper-class cluelessness; in Downton<\/em>, Cora\u2019s fond wartime recollections are a sign of her upper-class generosity.<\/p>\n If Cluny Brown had been hired at Downton Abbey, she might have shocked Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes just as much as she shocked Mr. Syrette and Mrs. Maile, but her quirkiness would likely have been assimilated rather than rejected. Carson has just as much reverence for tradition as Syrette (who\u2019s horrified when Belinski speaks to him as an equal), but Downton\u2019s residents, both downstairs and upstairs, are more flexible and more forgiving. That allows for greater harmony in the household, but it also lulls the servants (and any outsiders) into submission. Cluny might have eventually been embraced at Downton, but she never would have fit in. \u201cIt\u2019s 1927. We\u2019re modern folk!\u201d Lady Edith\u2019s husband Bertie (Harry Hadden-Paton) declares in Downton Abbey when he and his wife […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":539,"featured_media":12689,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1381,1399],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies","category-looking-back"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/539"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/clunybrown2.jpeg\")
<\/a>Classic Hollywood filmmaker Ernst Lubitsch understood all of this back in 1946, less than two decades removed from the actual historical period that Downton<\/em> depicts. The legendary director\u2019s final completed feature film, Cluny Brown<\/em>, is a sparkling comedy of manners that savagely skewers the kind of entitled British landowners that Downton<\/em> celebrates. Newly released in a lavish edition by Criterion after years of home-video unavailability, Cluny Brown<\/em> is an excellent capper to Lubitsch\u2019s remarkable career, and it stands alone as a refreshingly modern take on romance, gender roles, and class structure thanks to its effervescent title character, brilliantly played by Jennifer Jones.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
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