It took me time to really get what the “Lubitsch touch” is. It’s one of those film terms you hear as a film student or cinephile, although it eluded me until I had more familiarity with Capra, Sturges, and screwball in general. The Lubitsch touch is gentle, it’s the director nudging the ball back and forth with every beat. Jokes aren’t punctuated so much as they flow into each other through ellipses.
At the start of Ersnt Lubitsch’s 1946 film Cluny Brown, a man’s trying to find a plumber on a Sunday to fix his sink before party guests arrive. A foreign man comes to his door, whom he shows the flooded mess. The accented man starts to pontificate about the sink as a metaphor for human frustration. Apparently this man is not the plumber but a famous Czech writer, Adam Belenski (Charles Boyer), who’s come to London fleeing Nazi persecution. He’s decidedly out of place in his affinity for philosophizing compared to the haughty British formalities he’s caught in. But where he’s intellectual and Lubitsch is breezy, Cluny Brown is blunt.
The next knock on the door is from the indomitable young lady played by Jennifer Jones, ready to roll up her sleeves and take a wrench to the piping. The men watch in some combination of horror and curiosity as Cluny takes her stockings off, causing Belenski to note, “You see she’s not dressed for plumbing… but what woman is?” Lubitsch barely gives time for the audience to laugh as he cuts back to Cluny and pushes in on her loudly plopping her comically large tools on the floor. It’s ridiculous, and the film doesn't wait for you to think so too—it’s even funnier when you’re laughing at the last joke when the next one hits. Directing hands without the touch might come off as impatient or incessant, but Lubitsch revels in this absurd speed, letting one character move a little faster than the others in order for them to elicit the confused expressions so the audience can just laugh.
And when Cluny’s in the room, she’s always the one controlling the show. She’s happy-go-lucky, always excited in the moment, even to her own detriment (especially in matters of plumbing, unbecoming to a lady). It backfires hardest when she’s sent as a for a wealthy family, who initially mistake her for an upper-class woman, greeting her cordially with tea and crumpets before they realize the mistake. It’s a devastating scene, not because they reject Cluny for being Cluny, but on the simple basis of class and the role she’s supposed to play. By accident, they thought of her as human in the same way as themselves, not just a servant.
Cluny Brown is ultimately a film about where people are from, how much money they have, and who that’s supposed to make them to be. The British characters live in this stratification unquestioningly, with the upper crusts failing to realize the strangeness of their way of life as much as their housekeepers are unable to think outside their strict positions. Even the middle-class pharmacist who tries to court Cluny remarks on how proud he is that he was born just a stone’s throw from where he lives now, and how he intends to die there too—so serious about preserving the kingdom of his little house that he’s joined the volunteer firefighters just in case he needs to protect it from burning down.
And then there’s Belenski, the philosophic foreigner who sees right through all the contradictions of English formalities. And Cluny Brown, who’s ostensibly a Brit too according to the film’s diegesis, although in practice she has a distinctly mid-century American pluckiness, sticking out in a staid society. As her uncle tells her, “You don’t know your place,” which is perhaps the biggest joke of the film—we know she doesn’t need to, she’s Cluny Brown! It’s obvious from the first time we lay eyes on her that everyone else telling her where to go or how to be is missing what makes her so great. Who are they to say a woman can’t get into plumbing? She’s good at it, and charming too. She is who she is, she’s Cluny Brown.