Boudu Saved From Drowning

This film is not currently available on DVD. Film Description Aka Boudu sauvé des Eaux. A glorious treasure from the Golden Age of French Cinema. A bookseller comes to regret rescuing the eponymous tramp when the household's bourgeois morals are offended by Boudu's unruly amorous advances and disregard for social niceties. With a sprightly spirit of anarchy befriending Renoir's usual lyricism, humanism, smoothly gliding camera and mastery of mise-en-scene, here is another priceless marvel from the great Frenchman.

Film Details Director Jean Renoir Starring Michel Simon   Country France Language FRENCH   Year 1932

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Review by andrew hoellering on 11th March 2003

The film is from another era, like the Paris that we see in the background.It is leisurely, unhurried. There is no ‘meaning’, and the film has no polemical points to make. The story seems improvised, and its pace is casual and unforced. Renoir invites us into the story with his tramp .
The story is as simple as its characters. Boudu the tramp is saved from suicide by Monsieur Lestingois, a bookseller who takes him in to his home and tries to re-create him in his own solid-bourgeois image. Bearded and long-haired, this precursor of all hippies just wants to be left alone.He
shows what the middle classes give up for respectability, spilling wine on the table, leaving water running in the sink, wiping his shoes on the bedspread. Pauline Kael says there is some disorderly malice in him – a refusal to be clean and responsible - that is positively satisfying. Where
the bookseller is inhibited, even unmanned, Boudu seduces both his wife and mistress simply by being himself.
Michel Simon’s loose walk, his eyes that don’t communicate, his insouciance and smug self-satisfaction defy those bent on reforming him –instead, he changes them, and how he does so makes the story.
It oozes life and a leisurely unforced humour, and the naturalistic characters, situation and relationships turn out to be totally compelling. The whole thing is done with Renoir’s insouciant genius –as though he is filming a newsreel unfolding before our eyes.The actors are not arranged but found by the camera on the street, in the shop, on the banks of the Seine.One minute they are there; the next they disappear, to reappear casually again later on. Renoir allows his film – and us -to breathe easily
and naturally, and the simple act of breathing has rarely proved more enjoyable.

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Article - "Jean Vigo" by Pasquale Iannone
Monday 11th October 2004

The work of Jean Vigo – in its entirety barely more than three hours in running time – can be seen as the work of ‘un petit jeune homme qui s’amuse a faire des films’ - a young man who has fun making films. His was an almost child-like experimentation with a medium t...  View article in full

Article - "Boudu Saved From Drowning" by Graeme Hobbs
Saturday 1st April 2006

Boudu Saved from Drowning begins with a play in which an ivy-clad, pipe-playing Pan chases a young girl around a stage. This is soon shown to be the imaginings of the respectable bookseller Lestingois as he courts his maid to the sound of his neighbour’s flute...  View article in full

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