One of the most celebrated (French and otherwise) social satires of mannersm Jean Renoir’s Boudu Saved from Drowning (French: Boudu sauvé des eaux) stars the genius actor Michel Simon.
Grade: A
Renoir wrote the screenplay, from the 1919 play by René Fauchois, which he changed radically in order to make it suitable to his goal and style.
It all begins at the Latin Quarter, when bourgeois bookshop owner Edouard Lestingois rescues Boudu, a tramp, after he plunge into the Riverv Seine.
The family then adopts him,aiming to reform him into a respectable middle-class person; he is shaved, given haircut, and cladp in a suit.
However, the inherently rebelious Boudu shakes the household, challenging its mores and manners, while propositioning the housemaid and raping the wife.
When he wins on the lottery from a ticket Lestingois had given him, he is guided into marrying the housemaid. However, at the wedding, Boudu capsizes a rowboat and floats away, back to his old vagrancy, a free spirit once more.
A major change from the play is shifting the center from the character of Lestingois to that of Boudu.
The play ends with the marriage of Boudu and Anne-Marie, whereas in Renoir’s film, Boudu escapes ‘from holy padlock’ and heads for ‘ a future of independent, vagrant liberty.’ Initially angry, playwright Fauchois threatened to have his name removed from the credits, but later changed his mind.
(Fauchois’s career started as an actor with the Sarah-Bernhardt company, and when Michel Simon played Boudu on stage, Fauchois was Lestingois.)
Michel Simon was at various times a boxer, instructor, right-wing anarchist, and companion of prostitutes, pimps and petty crooks. He was extremely well read, a talented photographer, a hypochondriac, a misanthrope, owner of vast collection of pornography and with a reputation for unorthodox sexual behaviour which he did not deny.
Boudu doesn’t reject conventional values: he never had them in the first place. He is what the French call a marginal anarchic, a chaotic fool, who acts out people’s secret desires in defiance of conformity and propriety.
Remakes
The film was remade by Paul Mazursky as Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), starring Nick Nolte.
Another remake, Boudu (2005) was directed by Gérard Jugnot and starred Gérard Depardieu as Boudu.
Cast
Michel Simon as Priape Boudu
Charles Granval as Edouard Lestingois
Marcelle Hainia as Emma Lestingois
Sévérine Lerczinska as Chloe Anne Marie, la bonne
Jean Gehret as Vigour
Max Dalban as Godin
Jean Dasté as L’etudiant
Jacques Becker as Poet on park bench
Jean Renoir Filmography
The Whirlpool of Fate (1925)
Nana (1926)
Charleston Parade (1927)
Marquitta (1927)
The Little Match Girl (1928)
Le Bled (1929)
On purge bébé (1931)
La Chienne (1931)
Night at the Crossroads (1932)
Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932)
Chotard and Company (1933)
Madame Bovary (1934)
Toni (1935)
Life Belongs to Us (1936)
The Crime of Monsieur Lange (1936)
The Lower Depths (1936)
La Grande Illusion (1937)
La Marseillaise (1938)
La Bête Humaine (1938)
The Rules of the Game (1939)
Swamp Water (1941)
This Land Is Mine (1943)
The Southerner (1945)
The Diary of a Chambermaid (1946)
“Partie de campagne” (1946)
The Woman on the Beach (1947)
The River (1951)
The Golden Coach (1952)
French Cancan (1955)
Elena and Her Men (1956)
The Doctor’s Horrible Experiment (1959)
Picnic on the Grass (1959)
The Elusive Corporal (1962)
The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir (1970)
