Cluny Brown (1946) Says Squirrels to the Blu-Ray and Blu-Ray to the Squirrels

The Criterion Collection released Cluny Brown to Blu-ray on September 17, 2019. Ernst Lubitsch directed the film starring Charles Boyer, Jennifer Jones, and Peter Lawford.

‘Cluny Brown’ Criterion Synopsis

The final film completed by Ernst Lubitsch, this zany, zippy comedy of manners, set in England on the cusp of World War II, is one of the worldly-wise director’s most effervescent creations. Jennifer Jones shines in a rare comedic turn as Cluny Brown, an irrepressible heroine with a zeal for plumbing. Sent to work as a parlormaid at a stuffy country manor, she proceeds to turn the household upside down—with plenty of help from Adam Belinski (Charles Boyer), an eccentric Continental exile who has fled the Nazis but is still worried about where his next meal is coming from. Sending up British class hierarchy with Lubitsch’s famously light touch, Cluny Brown is a topsy-turvy farce that says nuts to the squirrels and squirrels to the nuts.

Read the full summary, listen to our Golden Age of the Silver Screen film review, and our Criterion Movie review.

SPECIAL FEATURES

• New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
• New conversation between film critics Molly Haskell and Farran Smith Nehme on unconventional female characters in Ernst Lubitsch’s films
• New video essay by film scholar Kristin Thompson
• The Lubitsch Touch, an interview with film scholar Bernard Eisenschitz from 2004
• Screen Directors Playhouse radio adaptation of the film from 1950, featuring Dorothy McGuire and Charles Boyer
• English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
• PLUS: An essay by novelist and essayist Siri Hustvedt

New cover by Caitlin Kuhwald