Boudu Saved From Drowning: Criterion Collection DVD Review
September 4, 2005
Picture this image, and then picture the scene that follows, as I lay out, and think about your own place in society, and whether or not you can sympathize with the character, or denounce the meaning as broad and obvious social criticism. One way or the other, it may be the key to your understanding of the situation, and by turns, the movie itself. The image: a frumpled hobo, sitting beneath a tree on a beautiful sunny day playing and singing happily with his black shaggy dog, the dog’s locks mingling ferociously with the bum’s gigantic, unkempt beard. The image is unforgettable, but what follows is less warm and inviting, for the dog runs away, worrying the tramp to no end, but a local cop pays him no mind in his refusal to help, “just the kind of dog you would have,” he sneers, threatening to lock the vagrant up for nothing if he doesn’t leave him alone. Away the tramp goes, into the woods, dwarfed by the huge trees, like an insignificant human speck, while the cop takes the same lost dog complaint from a wealthy woman, bowing to her request like an insignificant social servant, filled with contempt for his lower, but all smiles and respect for his superior in the economic structure. The scene is simple, like the structure of the entire movie, but it’s rife with social criticism and, maybe, a bit of satire, shielded in the bum’s dejection and the white woman’s easy triumph, and whether you can empathize with the tramp, who is far less cuddly as the image with the dog suggests, or care more for the general notion that, in any society, a cop probably would indeed take the rich woman more seriously than a dirty vagrant, thus softening the ultimate blow of the attack, is critical to “Boudu Saved From Drowning”, Jean Renoir’s 1932 light and bittersweet social comedy, for if you buy Boudu, the bum, as a lovable hero cast off by society’s prejudices, than you’ll have no problems, but if you don’t, and I think Renoir wanted it that way, you’re in for more than you bargained for with that early, lovely sunny day image.
Renoir’s film, recently released on DVD by the Renoir-loving buffs at The Criterion Collection, is all about an audiences perception of its titular character, but on a smaller scale, away from the politics of liberalism and socialism – cornerstones of the director’s most cherished works – is a character study of a man as big as Paris, as flawed as any economic model, and as misunderstood, and/or confusing, as any post-classical New Wave attack on the very classics it was born from. On the surface, you have a fish-out-of-water story, but scratch a little deeper into the theory of comedy for the sake of the betterment of the national social consciousness, and suddenly lovable, burly Boudu becomes more a symbol than a human, a symbol of class, a symbol of transformation, and a symbol of, most obvious, anarchy and blissful rebellion. By the time Boudu chucks himself into the Seine, distraught over the loss of his dog, only to be rescued by a bourgeois book store owner, Renoir has already made his importance quite clear, for the man cast off into the unforgiving beauty of an afternoon forest by a rude cop, isn’t just a brokenhearted grizzly bear of emotion, he’s a microcosm of the world’s poor, and his eventual triumph over the elite comes not as a shock, like some stated in stuck up circles in 1932, but as necessary relief, and the great Renoir does all he can to make that relief as troubling a release as possible.
“Boudu Saved From Drowning” has been criticized for having no plot, for existing solely to please Renoir’s curious and unique outlook on French society, best exemplified with 1936’s “The Crime of Monsieur Lange”, and 1939’s “The Rules of the Game”, and in a way that is true, but it’s too easy, and unfair, to suggest the film is one of the master’s lesser socialist essays because of its episodic and abrupt layout. If anything, the story, about a Parisian tramp (Michel Simon), who is plucked from the banks of suicide by Mr. Lestingois (Charles Granval), a rich book store owner, only to have the bum totally and completely take over his household, disrespecting space, wreaking havoc on ideals, and obliterating standard morals, serves as a carefully structured chess board for Renoir to move his Pawn from one famous Paris attraction to the next, stopping periodically in Lestingois’ cushy house to further punch up the differences between the classes. And by differences we also mean hypocrisies, for no sooner do we find out that kindly, pudgy Lestingois is having an affair with the downstairs maid, does Renoir have a newly shaved and cleaned Boudu (“Don’t I smell nice?”) seducing the woman of the house, in a brilliantly staged flourish of marching band music, painter’s symbolism (remember who Renoir’s father was), and suggestive camera moves. The solution to this problem of upstairs/downstairs politics and co-mingling is to play off Boudu’s rudeness and Lestingois’ polite indifference with spirited farce, simmering hatred, and eventual natural acceptance. “Even though he disgust me, I did save his life,” says Lestingois after Boudu disgraces a prized first edition Balzac, “I’m like a grandfather to him now.” Who ever said the fat cat and the dirty rat couldn’t co-exist in the same habitat?
Renoir’s distinguished career is often labeled with words like “humanist”, “pacifist”, and “classicist”, but looking at ‘Boudu’ today, 73 years and two remakes later, you’re struck with how real it is, almost like a 19th century farce (or even older, a Shakespearian comedy) walked into a neo-realist picture by mistake and brought along his friend poetic realism for guidance. Some of the scenes following the maid doing her kitchen duties could be straight out of De Sica’s “Umberto D.”, had De Sica’s film not come twenty years after Renoir’s, and there’s a justly famous sequence where Renoir shoots Simon from two stories up, from across the street, using a telephoto lens, as Boudu wanders, almost drunkenly, down the Quais to the Pont des Arts and attempted suicide, and we get a series of real life moments where actual Parisian bystanders toss of the smelly bum with stares of hatred worse than the fictional cop. The docu trickery of such scenes is matched in total with staged trickery involving complex camera movements, jittery mise-en-scene crowding, and the already established character symbolism to make a film of striking visual sophistication, yet basic and simple enough to appeal to a broader, less film snobbish criteria. Michel Simon’s performance is one of his all time best, and Renoir uses his friend like a bouncy ball of social criticism and quandary, bouncing around Paris like the Jesus of the sub-poverty line, minus the religion, and miracles, yet just as secular, in the loosely comedic interpretation of the word. The ultimately satisfying moral of Renoir’s semi-masterpiece is that, had Boudu’s dog not run away, and had he never had his brief fling in the upper-middle class, that snooty cop still would have kicked him out of the park, into the towering woods, and into some kind of serene oblivion, where the troubles of an unforgiving world fall not on a happy bearded face, and his playfully shaggy dog, caught in the moment on a gorgeous sunny summer day.
“Boudu Saved From Drowning” has been released on DVD by The Criterion Collection, featuring an archival introduction by Renoir, numerous critical studies, and an interactive map of the film’s Parisian settings.
by Adam Suraf