Of all the great directors France has produced since the Lumière brothers put light to celluloid, the greatest may be
Jean Renoir, son of the painter Pierre-August and director of two movies considered by many critics among the best ever made: La Grande Illusion in 1937 and The Rules of the Game two years later. The latter has appeared in the Sight & Sound Top Ten poll (voted by critics and directors) every decade since 1952; it is worth noting however that the movie was slated upon its release, and even banned in France by the government. Similarly when
Boudu Saved From Drowning, one of his first sound movies from 1932 was finally released in America in 1967 it was met generally with bafflement and condescension (one of the few voices of praise was Pauline Kaels). And like Rules of the Game it is now, correctly, regarded as a classic. The title character is a tramp, as the movie opens wandering the streets of Paris with his dog. When his dog vanishes he jumps in the Seine (although the cause and effect is never made clear). He is spotted by a kindly bookseller, gazing out his window with a telescope, who dashes out to save him, before allowing him temporarily to move into his house. He, his wife and his maid try gently to make a decent citizen of Boudu; which is to say, they try to impress their middle-class morality and sensibilities on him. However Boudu undermines everything they push on him; he spits out wine and asks for water instead, cleans his dirty shoes on the bed linen and, in what for his rescuer is simply the last straw, spits in a book by Balzac. Boudu is played by the immortal
Michel Simon, who also worked with directors like Jean Vigo in Latalante and Michel Carné in Port of Shadows. He was, coincidentally, born the year the Lumières invented cinema, 1895. Directors sometimes found him difficult to work with; according to David Thompsons Biographical Dictionary of Film he hated organisation. This is certainly in keeping with this, his most famous role. He has an endless freedom on screen; one imagines he did something different for every take. Because he is not constricted by the social rules of his new family, he is not as constrained physically either, rolling over tables like a child, or wedging himself into a door frame. At no point do you catch him doing anything cute for the audience; unlike Charlie Chaplins tramp, he does not rely on pathos and sentiment.
Indeed Renoirs movies in general lacked that sentiment, and it is one of the reasons they have remained timeless. There is no clear political message in the movie, and one would have to be positively sadistic not to sympathise with the family Boudu is inflicted upon. The bookseller is douard Lestingois (played by
Charles Granval). Why do we have a piano if nobody plays? his maid, with whom he is having an affair, asks him one day. Because were respectable people, douard replies. Although his life is one of bourgeois respectability, and although he has the hypocrisy to cheat on his wife (the first indicator that such respectability is little more than a facade), he seems like a nice enough guy, and he rescues Boudu for respectable, honest reasons. Boudu, however, cannot be tamed; elsewhere Thompson refers to him as Pariss subtle answer to King Kong. He has the appearance of a Greek satyr; he is, like the movie, timeless, his life not dictated at all by his cultural climate. He has a freedom that douard will never know. Renoir is not really criticising douard for being middle-class, just observing how he has defined himself in a way that makes the social difference too great, for all his good intentions.
Renoir films this with his usual patient beauty. The lighting is both naturalistic and, because of the time it was made, a little dreamlike. He tends to use medium to long shots, tracking between rooms, showing us people framed in windows and doors. Some of his visual compositions are beautiful but they never feel forced. Exactly how much of this was influenced by his father I do not know, but certainly there is a painterly quality to the way real life is captured and in the characters that fill the screen in the outdoor shots. His style is classical in a way that does not age; his work holds up better for me than many of the later New Wave movies. I dont think the movie is quite perfect (La Grand Illusion and The Rules of the Game are); the movie unfolds so naturally that there are only two things that feel like plot. The first, Boudus suicide attempt, is the catalyst for the story, although Boudu is generally so full of life its hard to imagine him wanting to drown. The second involves 100,000 Francs and serves to illustrate that Boudu is incorruptible. I could probably do without the latter; we already know Boudu is incorruptible. He is also a menace, one that will undermine everything in a safe, middle-class home. When douard receives an award for his bravery, simply the presence of Boudu in the movie makes the distinction feel completely arbitrary. Unlike douard he is not materialistic. He attracts douard and his family, but he repels them too. Its been said before, but it perhaps is no coincidence that in the end he steals the clothes off a scarecrow and, carrying the wooden cross that held it up, gives us the brief but undeniable image of the tramp as Christ. This is right before he is reborn, in shabby clothes once more, to carry on down the river, while douard sits firmly on the bank, watching it run past him. Boudou Saved From Drowning was released on
Blu-ray today.