Film Forum

U.S., 1946
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
Starring Jennifer Jones, Charles Boyer
Approx. 100 min.  

In 1938 England, Charles Boyer’s anti-Hitler Czech refugee Adam Belinski philosophizes on squirrel management, charmingly sponges off total strangers, and walks unbidden into the rooms of young women at night for the most innocent reasons—and then scandalizes his posh hosts by taking an interest in chambermaid and plumber’s daughter Jennifer Jones. One of Lubitsch’s wittiest, slyest, lightest, and most likeable comedies—the last he would complete.

Presented with support from The Robert Jolin Osborne Endowed Fund for American Classic Cinema of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s and The Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film

Reviews

“A comedy of hindsight, with a melancholy sting to the characters’ squabbles about whether or not to discuss looming war at garden parties.”
– Farran Smith Nehme, The Village Voice

“A lovely, easygoing comedy, full of small surprising touches… Jones gives her lightest, funniest performance!”
– Pauline Kael

“The most European, Renoiresque of Lubitsch’s American movies. His style is now simplicity itself, watching the characters in the frame with an accomplished ease… Boyer offers the polish and charm that never failed him, while Jones’ undertones of neurotic sexuality lend the character a needed subtext. Belinski is one of Lubitsch’s most endearing characters. He may be one of Hitler’s worst enemies, a great liberal, but he is not averse to enjoying life’s pleasures on someone else’s tab… As always, Lubitsch’s answer to the problems of a homicidal world lies in personal fulfillment—not on the world’s terms, but those of the individual.”
– Scott Eyman

“A satire of British manners that skitters along the border of complete absurdity… There’s a layer of erotic knowingness underneath the graceful shenanigans. The way Jones plays Cluny Brown, she’s a radiantly sexual woman who has never had sex. She’s naturally uninhibited, and she frightens the devil out of everyone but Boyer’s sophisticated European.”
– David Denby, The New Yorker