Cluny Brown

Ernst Lubitsch's final film is an unalloyed gem. With his trademark wit and rapier like satire, he skewers British pre-war society and, though he would obviously never have used the words feminism, or patriarchy, this, like many of his films in his own way, supports the former and attacks the latter.

To teach her to stay within her social station, Cluny Brown (Jennifer Jones) is sent by her plumber uncle to work as a parlor maid in the country house of Sir Henry Carmel (Reginald Owen) and his wife, Alice (Margaret Bannerman). Brown soon finds herself torn between her attraction to Adam Belinski (Charles Boyer), a political refugee staying as a houseguest, and the prospect of a stable marriage with stuffy Jonathan Wilson (Richard Haydn), a chemist.