by Ed Howard
Boudu Saved From Drowning is Jean Renoir’s sardonic, wryly comic take on the antagonism between bourgeois values and lower-class crudity. The title figure, Boudu (Michel Simon), is an oafish beggar, an outrageously whiskered tramp who stomps heedlessly over the supposed dignity and sophistication of middle-class respectability. When the bourgeois book store owner Lestingois (Charles Granval) saves Boudu from drowning in the river, he becomes the tramp’s benefactor, feeding and clothing Boudu and giving him a place to sleep indefinitely. Lestingois is portrayed as a decent man in many ways, good-hearted and generous, willing to do good deeds for their own sake: he gives away books to young students, recognizing their romantic, poetic spirit from his own youth, and his rescue of Boudu is not motivated by the awards and kudos heaped on him by his neighbors, with which he seems mildly uncomfortable. At the same time, however, Lestingois is an avatar of bourgeois pretensions and affectations. He has a piano in his house, despite the fact that no one plays it, because respectable families simply must have one, and he carries on an affair with his plump, giggly maid Anne Marie (Sévérine Lerczinska) because his standoffish wife Emma (Marcelle Hainia) no longer interests him.
When Boudu enters this house, he completely disrupts the family’s familiar routines, which had settled into a comfortable way of life. Boudu has no inclination for social graces, and never so much as thanks his benefactor for saving his life, or for the attention, gifts and food lavished on him since the rescue. Instead, the tramp runs roughshod over everything in the house, crudely defacing and mocking any hints of respectability that he comes in contact with. Boudu simply doesn’t see the point of the routines and polished surfaces of bourgeois life. Confronted with a tie, he asks what it’s for, and Lestingois has to admit that it’s not really “for” anything, that it’s not necessary at all, it’s just “a piece of cloth one wears around the neck.” Boudu shows the same disinclination towards learning about cleanliness. He eats messily and spills things everywhere, but sees no need to clean. When he spills wine on the table and Emma sprinkles salt on the stain to soak up the wine, he responds by pouring more wine on top of it — to soak up the salt, of course. The purpose of the fundamentals of middle class life eludes him: he eats when he’s hungry, wears clothes that simply cover him in the most basic way, and doesn’t really care about much of anything, besides the black dog who wanders away at the beginning of the film, initially upsetting Boudu enough to trigger a suicide attempt but then seemingly forgotten soon after.
What’s interesting about Renoir’s film is how thoroughly it destabilizes questions of audience sympathy, completely disrupting any attempts to figure out where the film’s own sympathies might lie. Lestingois is a harmless, kindly if somewhat silly old man, an adulterer with literary pretensions who enjoys making florid, stylized declarations of love to his frivolous maid. Lestingois might be a representative of the bourgeois but he’s a surprisingly sympathetic one, just as Boudu is a surprisingly unsympathetic lower-class bum; this is no simplistic social commentary piece. It’s undeniable that Boudu is crass and ungrateful and often downright rotten, willfully making a mess of his host’s home by wiping shoe polish on his bed and flooding his kitchen. He’s also, in his treatment of women, similar to Lestingois in his flirtatiousness, and in other ways even more despicable than his host, who at worst is a dirty old man. Boudu, on the other hand, is a rapist, assaulting Lestingois’ wife at one point, though Renoir makes the scene especially distasteful when, afterward, he shows the woman getting up from the bed with a big smile on her face, having at some point given in and enjoyed the rape. At the same time, Simon’s performance goes a long way towards ensuring that Boudu, even at his most destructive and hateful, is at heart a lovable tramp, funny and playful and light-hearted. It’s a masterful comic performance, whether in the broad gestures (the way he rolls his eyes with pleasure when eating or hitting on a girl) or the subtler touches (the stiff-kneed walk that’s his closest approximation of formality).
Boudu’s roughness and casual disregard for conventions finds its aesthetic equivalent in Renoir’s rough, ragged visual sensibility. Renoir’s images here are rarely conventional, but instead seem to have been improvised on the fly. Figures shift unpredictably in and out of focus, and the occasional coordinated camera move seems strangely at odds with the prosaic, shabby quality of the images. At one point, the camera pans across the Lestingois home, catching from a distance the action happening in rooms faintly visible down long corridors: first, Boudu and the family eating dinner, then following the maid from room to room as she putters around at her work, finally coming forward to meet the camera at the last room along the tracking shot’s path. It all seems somehow accidental, the edges intentionally left frayed, glimpses of events caught haphazardly even within the context of camera moves that must have been elaborately timed and planned out. Renoir finds himself, aesthetically, somewhere between the bourgeois respectability of Lestingois and the rough carelessness of Boudu, going to great lengths in order to appear not to care. There’s something endearing about the looseness of Renoir’s aesthetic, which in its own way is as playful and sprightly as Simon’s performance.
The film’s theme of bourgeois respectability being upturned culminates in the final scene, when Boudu literally overturns an entire boat full of fancily dressed wedding guests, then proceeds to calmly, lazily swim away from his own wedding. Not only does this put a new perspective on Boudu’s earlier “drowning” — he could swim all along? — but it is his flight from the threat of becoming bourgeois himself, of settling down into a loveless marriage, a copy of Lestingois’ own. Boudu earlier spit into the pages of a book about marriage, so it’s not so surprising that he should flee from this ultimate signifier of respectability. He’s content in his tramp’s rags, lying in the grass chomping on a crust of bread he’s begged from strangers. Renoir’s film spends its final moments with the contented Boudu on the riverbank, then tracks back along the river to find the bourgeois, soaking wet and distressed, huddled together looking miserable in the wake of Boudu’s devastation. This is, in its odd way, Renoir’s happy ending, embracing the anarchy of Boudu, the unfocused destructiveness that causes him to leave a messy trail of filth and garbage everywhere he goes.
How Boudu Saved from Drowning made the Top 100:
Sam Juliano No. 10
Jon Warner No. 19
Jason Marshall No. 19
Bill Riley No. 30
Frank Aida No. 32
Maurizio Roca No. 38
Pedro Silva No. 38
Jamie Uhler No. 39
Mark Smith No. 40
Ed Howard No. 49
What a wonderful write-up Ed. I only saw the film recently after noticing that it received a lot of votes. But if I had seen it earlier, it would have found a way in my list because I quite loved it. Many lines from your review echo my sentiments towards the film, especially these words:
What’s interesting about Renoir’s film is how thoroughly it destabilizes questions of audience sympathy, completely disrupting any attempts to figure out where the film’s own sympathies might lie.
I was thrown off guard a bit regarding this as well, especially after Bondu is not shown to be a lovable saint. And it was indeed a surprize to discover he could swim after all. At the film’s start, he wanted to end his life but I still wonder if he was just staging a drowning to get attention? Although, his surprize at the attention he got makes me think he never expected to be treated the way he was.
Boudu Saved From Drowning is Jean Renoir’s sardonic, wryly comic take on the antagonism between bourgeois values and lower-class crudity.
Your opening sentence does size it up concisely Ed, but as Sachin observed it’s a magnificent piece that probes much deeper in assessing this great early French comedy by the most celebrated director in French history. To boot, Michel Simon delivers one of the most iconic performances of all-time, as the anarchic oaf who somehow wins affections for his lower-class status even while trampling on some of the freedoms afforded to him. There is a startling contrast between the exterior ‘documentary’ realism and the interior drawing room comedy, and there’s a fair dose of fate and comeuppance in these proceedings. Your discussion of the ‘destablization of audience sympathies’ and the film’s imagery are brilliantly posed, and the tied in ‘visual sensibilities’ contention brings in further enlightenment. After watching the film one needs to get hold of Arnold Lobel’s Caldecott Medal winning “Fables” for ‘The Pelican and the Crane.’
BOUDU is one of the great anarchic comedies in movie history.
Well this film is amazing. It’s really funny and has some fascinating social commentary going on. I watched it again recently and was totally floored again by Michel’s performance and by how funny the film is. It is somewhat like the silent clowns, but he is more crude and base and follows his instincts. He is one of the great characterizations from this era. This is in fact my favorite Renoir film. I think the funniest sequence for me is the scene where Boudu is polishing his shoes and totally makes a mess of the kitchen and leaves a trail of shoe polish from the kitchen to the bedroom. Hilarious!
I do have to question something though. You are saying that Boudu is a rapist. I do not see that at all! The scene where he seduces the wife….I totally saw that the wife has had the hots for him practically the whole time! She wants to have sex with him! I really don’t think this is a rape scene. Does anyone else feel that this scene plays differently? I’m certainly willing to be wrong. I just don’t think that I am.
In emotional temperment it’s unlike anything Renoir has ever done. But I know that’s a given considering all the heavyweight themes he tackled in later years. The Rules of the Game is comedic too but far more serious. Simon is sensational. Ed Howard has written an exceptional review.
In one sense Boudu is a lovable narcissist, but he’s also a symbol to poke fun at the bourgeiosie. Not as subversive as what Bunuel did years later, but just as telling. The peacetime Paris cafes, rivers and music are long-gone but no less visually arresting and defining. Renoir’s film is the official beginning of the hippie movement. Simon was great for the second time for Renoir after La Chienne. Impressive review.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but I’ve never thought that the sex/rape scene was consensual. It’s the most disturbing moment in the film (I gasped the first time I saw it), and though Boudu might be a lovable rascal, he can also be a dangerous one. Renoir’s celebration of anarchy is ambiguous, to say the least.
“Renoir’s celebration of anarchy is ambiguous, to say the least.”
Nah, it’s cystal clear.
If ‘Boudu’ anticipates the hippie movement and some of its horrors, then Renoir was a prophet. Boudu never thinks or cares that there may be some non-swimmers in that wedding boat. The film goes deeper than a mere mockery of the bourgeoisie.
Yes, it goes a lot deeper, as Ed’s review and my own comments would suggest. And yours too for that matter. I simply attempted to embellish the piece with some additional observations and speculations. Renoir didn’t have to be a prophet at all, just a point about the chartacteristics exhibited here that were compunded decades later. And who said anything about the ‘horrors?’ The aspect I was getting at was the slovenly physical appearance. I thought I was obvious on that.
wow, whataya know? The amazon programmers seem to be in my interpretive camp. The first sentence under the editorial summary of the film:
“Long before there were hippies, there was, sublimely, Boudu.”
I don’t think they were figuring Renoir was a prophet.
Oh, horrors like the Manson posse. Boudu, like all anarchists, has a dark and dangerous side, that’s all I was getting at. Don’t get me wrong, ‘Boudu’ is a fascinating photographic record of Paris ca. 1930, and Michel Simon is, well, Simon, utterly brilliant. And Ed’s penned a great review. But the rape episode sets off some disturbing reverberations.
On that I am agreed with you Mark completely.
Both of you gentlemen make some excellent, valid points. That Manson remembrance reverberates and chills my blood to this very day Mark. And yes I love the visual record of 1930’s Paris. The stability and bliss wasn’t going to last much longer.
Maybe the anarchic strain isn’t as compelling as it is in Vigo’s ‘Zero for Conduct’ but it’s there vividly.
Great review, by the way.
Didn’t see this until after I’d turned my list in, but it definitely deserves a spot. It’s an deromanticized portrait of a tramp compared with Chaplin’s work but still sort of a fantasy to the extent that Boudu is seen as “free,” though I wouldn’t say that’s Renoir’s own final judgment on the character.
I also love the point Ed makes in regard to pretentions about the family owning a piano not because anyone plays it, but because it’s the ‘respectable thing to do.’
Just at to let everyone know that as active a blogger as Ed has been over the past years, he has most understandably been tied up th last few months, even at his own site.
The reason?
A beautiful baby girl born his wife a short time ago!!!
Best wishes to the Howards!!!