The literal translation of Boudu sauvé des eaux is “Boudu saved from the waters” (thanks for the correction, Marilyn), which seems more apt than the English saved from drowning. After all, the very first shot, after the credits, is a stark, white, frame-filling “Boudu.” superimposed over water. The name ends in a period mark, as if it’s the definitive Boudu — Boudu period, and he’s in the water. Are we to take from this that Boudu’s natural state is being in the water, even prior to his jumping literally into the drink? Water is an ancient metaphor for chaos, for disorder; is Boudu’s life chaos? Or — more dangerous thought — is Boudu chaos himself?
In this way, we enter into Boudu Saved from Drowning, where nothing is simple, nothing is straightforward. Renoir tells us things elliptically, ambiguously, at a glance. On the surface, it’s a comedy of manners, a farce in the classic French tradition. The set-up is banal: a bourgeois bookseller Édouard Lestingois (Charles Granval), his mistress Anne-Marie (Sévérine Lerczinska) the upstairs maid and Lestingois’ wife Emma (Marcelle Hainia). Yawn. Where have we seen that one before?
It’s all there in the opening sequence: Lestingois as Pan chasing Anne-Marie, who is dressed as a nymph, around a set. It’s clearly artificial: the background is painted and the columns move when he nudges them. Over the top of it all plays a lone flute (is it Pan’s?), with that quality of mystery that the instrument often conveys. Cut to the interior of the bookshop, where he has apparently caught Anne-Marie, and is declaiming while holding her in his arms: “Anne-Marie,” he says, “you are like the nymphs. You are as graceful as they and could frolic in mossy glades . . .” Blah, blah, blah: not only is he cheating on his wife, but he’s being a pompous ass while he does so. He considers himself an educated man, a man of letters, who places himself in the classical tradition, in line with Euripides and Aristophanes.
Were original audiences lulled by this opening? Did it make them complacent about what they were about to see? Did they expect one thing and get something completely different? They apparently didn’t like what they ended up with, they tore up the theater seats and lit fires with newspapers. According to Michel Simon, who plays Boudu, the police were called regularly to the theater where the film played, and it was banned three days into its initial Paris run. Seems the sight of Boudu eating sardines with his hands, just smashing them into his mouth, as and trashing a ladies boudoir with shoe polish, was too much for refined Parisian sensibilities. Perhaps as well audiences resented being made fun of in so thorough a manner as Renoir does in this film.
Renoir’s films — in particular those from the ’30s — had a way of being banned, of pissing off the powers that be. Seven years later, Rules of the Game, considered now one of the greatest films ever made, was banned in France on the eve of World War II, after outraged audiences tore up theaters once again. As well as being massively entertaining, Renoir’s films were often political statements, and he sometimes paid the price. But he was a passionate filmmaker at a time when the French film industry had not yet become a profit-making machine modeled after Hollywood.
After the opening sets the scene with the Lestingois household, we cut to the park and a shot of . . . water. A child’s boat is being pulled across a pond in the Bois de Boulogne, a park on the Western edge of the city. And there sits Boudu himself, under a tree, squabbling with his dog. “Leave my grub alone,” he says, then tosses some to the pooch anyway. There is an open feel to this first scene in the park, a feel of freedom. It has a Dionysian look to it, or perhaps a Rousseau-like one that, for all it’s relative tameness (it is, after all, a park) still feels more open than the claustrophobia of Lestingois’ bookshop.
And that is one of the oppositions in a film full of them: the expansiveness of nature, of the world, versus the closed-in bourgeois society. Renoir frames the park in open, uncrowded compositions, with wild tangles of trees and undergrowth in the background. Inside the bookshop, and in the Lestingois’ upstairs apartment, the camera is confined, overcrowded. The compositions are closed, hemmed in by walls and the artificiality of their world.
Boudu’s dog runs off, and this sets the plot in motion, for he is despondent — Boudu, not the dog — and tired of life. He hikes into the center of town, or more precisely wanders, and onto the Ponts des Arts, right in front of Lestingois’ shop. A confirmed voyeur, the bookseller is telescopically spying on passing women from his upstairs apartment. Behind him, 
Anne-Marie is cleaning an artificial tree, complete with artificial birds, that speaks to another opposition in the film: genuine versus artificial. We have just seen the “wilds” and now we see a simulation of it, cooped up in Lestingois’ apartment.
Lestingois spots Boudu, wandering along the Seine: “Just look at that one,” he says “He’s wonderful. I’ve never seen such a perfect tramp.” To Lestingois, Boudu is a specimen, an object for study, a type. It reminds me of Ronald Reagan’s saying about the difference between a liberal, who feels for abstractions — the poor, the homeless, the hungry — and a conservative, who loves the individual, and will give him or her the shirt off his back. Perhaps the intensely humanist Renoir would have agreed with him about which one was more desirable.
Boudu jumps into the Seine, and Lestingois, horrified, races out of his shop, down the quay and into the water to save him. A crowd (another symbol of chaos) gathers on the banks and on the bridge, and they cheer wildly as, in conjunction with a passing tour boat and skiff, rescues the tramp in a spectacularly matter-of-fact scene. The crowd follows him — roiling and rowdy and cheering — as he brings the dripping Boudu into his shop. There, they are literally shut out of the proceedings: the door is closed, the chaos subsides, and we’re left in the relative calm of the bookshop. With one small difference: A little bit of disorder has been introduced into the shop, and it proceeds to tear their lives apart.
Boudu Saved From Drowning is structured in three acts, which it owes partly to its origins as a stage play by René Fauchois. Renoir sets the acts apart with music in the form of the solo flute played by a neighbor, which serves as a marker but also to remind us of the 
wildness that has entered into the Lestingois’ lives. (Thus another opposition: chaos versus order) Always on the cutting edge, Renoir utilized deep focus techniques — which he would perfect in Rules of the Game — to help us keep straight the geography of Lestingois’ apartment. In one breathtakingly simple tracking shot — which you can see here — he establishes the precise relationships between dining area, kitchen and the central courtyard, and as he does so, reinforces the differences in class between the denizens of each.
Another or Renoir’s technical innovations was the use of long lenses. In what is perhaps the most famous shot of the film, which you can see here, he places the camera in a second-story window, and across the street, from Boudu as he shambles along the book-stalls on the Left Bank. It’s an early example of guerilla filmmaking: the street was not cleared, and the other people in the shot are actual passersby. They have no idea who Simon is or that he is not an actual Parisian tramp.
By the time he made Boudu, Renoir was an old hand at film directing: it was his eleventh feature film as solo director. He shows how good he was at the art in his sure staging of action within the confines of the Lestingois’ apartments. As Boudu is introduced, there is almost a balletic quality to the chaos within Renoir’s closed compositions. As the crowd thins out, the staging becomes more calm and studied, except for Boudu, who is a continuing locus of confusion.
Which brings us to the center of the film, the astonishing performance by Michel Simon. All the acting is fine, especially that of Hainia, who turns what could have been an hysterical part into a deliciously understated performance. But the picture belongs lock, stock and barrel to Michel Simon. I am convinced that it is one of the greatest performances of the last 
century. Wry and physical, he is constantly in motion, literally bouncing off the walls and hanging from the doorways. Although he is clearly disturbed, it is impossible to tell when he is truly off his nut and when he is slyly messing with his benefactors and, through them, us.
The genius of Simon’s performance is that we don’t always like him, or at least I don’t always like him. He makes me nervous: I cringe while I laugh as he slides across furniture, invading the personal space of everybody he meets. He is imperious and cranky, and not at all subservient as we expect the poor to be. Perhaps that is the root of it: tramps and otherwise marginalized individuals are expected to by God act the part, to act like they are marginalized. It is a bedrock of our belief system, you hear it all the time: beggars can’t be choosers, but that isn’t the case for Boudu. He expects not only to choose, but to dictate as well. He thinks he is the equal of his middle-class benefactors, and that drives them, and perhaps us, nuts.
Another thing that drives his benefactors — as well as us? — crazy is his lack of gratitude for what they have done for him. It is seen in many ways, from Emma’s expectation that he help out to Édouard’s calling him an ungrateful to Anne-Marie lecturing about not him not saying “thank you.” The Lestingois’ expect not only gratitude but obligation out of Boudu. When Emma confronts him, intending to tell him to leave, she begins with “Mr. Lestingois and I are your benefactors.” “Yes, I know” says Boudu. “Nevertheless, you don’t seem fully conscious of your obligation to us arising from your situation.” Apparently, the charity of the Lestingois’ is not very charitable; everything they give has strings attached.
Part of what Renoir is up to in Boudu — other than making a truly funny
satire — is pitting the middle class against the under-class and, through the interaction, poking enormous fun of the former. The vacuousness of the bourgeoisie is laid bare through the actions and antics and attitude of the tramp. Boudu represents freedom; the Lestingoises live in oppression. Boudu represents chaos; the Lestingoises order. Boudu represents the real; the Lestingois’ lives are as artificial as that fake tree that Anne-Marie keeps dusting.
But the film has more going for it than mere class comedy. As Jean-Pierre Gorin points out, in a supplement on the Criterion DVD, the figure of Boudu is downright subversive, out-and-out dangerous. He is a wild element that has crept into the bookseller’s life, an element that is not altogether safe. This is shown very clearly in the rape (or is it seduction?) of Emma. Boudu 
has gotten spiffied up, with a hair-cut and a shave, and he walks with a new purpose, no longer weaving and bobbing and bouncing off the walls. It is as if he has become his benefactor Édouard. and now he is about to replace him on his marital bed as well. As she attempts to expel him from the household, he is pawing at her, making his desire for her very clear, and their conversation is about kitchen versus boudoir, but it’s clear they’re not talking about shoe polish, but about matters of sex and class. Boudu transgresses the ultimate boundary and takes her on her own bed.
From that point on, Boudu is Lestingois ‘ doppelganger, his off-skew double. He watches the shop in the bookseller’s absence, sending away a customer who wants a copy of The Flowers of Evil with a supercilious “This isn’t a flower shop.” He marries Lestingois’ mistress Anne-Marie — Emma’s double
— after he becomes solvent by winning the lottery.
It is while they are at the wedding, again in the “wilds” outside the city, that Boudu reaches for a water lily, unbalances the skiff the wedding party is in, and dumps everyone into the water. While the guests and his bride scramble for the banks, he lets the current carry him downstream. While Édouard, Emma and Anne-Marie dry off glumly on the bank, they wonder whether he has drowned or swum off. Only we know the truth: that he has been taken by whatever spirit animates him back to the wild. He has shed his new identity — quite literally, donning a scarecrow’s clothing — and gone back to cadging food imperiously from strangers.
The final shot of the film is a “bum’s parade,” shot from an extremely low angle, and interspersed with glimpses of the spires of Notre Dame. As one commentator noted, Renoir might be making a statement about the spiritual versus the earthiness of the tramps, but I think we at last understand that very first shot, of Boudu’s name, alone, over water. We start with Boudu alone and end with many; Boudu is all tramps, everywhere and at once.
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Great choice, Rick, and great writeup of this fine but often frustrating film. I love Simon’s performance, and I love how the casual raggedness of Renoir’s aesthetic — the shifting focus and long tracking shots that seem to almost accidentally capture hints of activity in the distance — mirrors Boudu’s chaotic temperment. A few more initial thoughts:
- I love how ambivalent the film is about who we are meant to sympathize with. Yes, it’s a satire of the bourgeois, but it’s not like Lestingois is such a terrible guy; in many ways he’s actually pretty decent and kind. There’s a sense that he doesn’t really deserve the rough treatment of Boudu. And as funny and playful as Boudu is (Simon’s performance helps) it’s hard not to hate him sometimes, especially when he rapes Emma.
- Speaking of the rape, I found it more than a little troubling that she gets up afterward smiling broadly, apparently having given in and started to enjoy the rape at some point.
- Boudu’s sexuality is also the one commonality he has with his benefactor throughout the film. Their attitudes towards women are very similar, although Boudu naturally takes it to the extreme. Whereas Lestingois is content to flirt and to eye women walking by in the streets, Boudu is more hands on and more apt to take what he wants. And while Lestingois tolerates marriage as a necessity of bourgeois respectability, straying only in secret, Boudu spits in a book about marriage and, at the end, upturns a boat full of wedding guests and flees back to his freedom, away from the bourgeois marriage he had been settling into.
He thinks he is the equal of his middle-class benefactors, and that drives them, and perhaps us, nuts.
He drove me nuts, but not because he thought of himself as an equal. He was ungrateful, and Lestingois did deserve thanks. Lestingois may be a smug, adulterous
egotist, but he’s not really all that bad, as Ed points out. Boudu may have been an abstract to Lestingois when he was watching him through the telescope, but he stopped seeing Boudu that way once he jumped into the river.
So no, I didn’t like Boudu too much, but I did like the film, and this was a terrific write-up, Rick. One other thing that I thought was potentially interesting was the fact that Boudu acts drunk throughout the film, but you never see him take a drink, and, in fact, he turns down wine in favor of water with his bread-and-sardines meal.
Nice review Rick. You’ve thrown a lot out there to talk about, but, from my side of the shoutbox, I wanted to start with this:
Part of what Renoir is up to in Boudu — other than making a truly funny satire — is pitting the middle class against the under-class and, through the interaction, poking enormous fun of the former.
I think he also pokes enormous fun at the latter, or, at least conciously decides to not treat them as totally oppressed creatures. This is what I like about many of Renoir’s social comedies, he doesn’t spare anybody, and, at the same time, he isn’t snide about his commentary. I don’t think anybody in Boudu Saved from Drowning is a likable character, including, and perhaps especially Boudu, but at the same time Renoir does not show contempt for any of them. They are still humans. I think the farcical tone of the film helps us not feel bitter towards anyone.
As much as Renoir pokes fun at the middle-class (comments ranging from “We should always help the less fortunate” to “Look! One of us is doing his civic duty!” to “We should only give charity to those who are our equals”) he digs in on the “helpless victim” stereotype of the homeless/under-class as well. Boudu obviously doesn’t want to be taken from his station in life. He is under-class and he wants to be there. He prefers it. My favorite moment is when Boudu complains about having a cold because Lestingois had to save him from the water.
I’ve got some important errands to run, so I’ll be away for a bit after posting this, but I will be back.
Michel Simon is a great favorite of mine from The Two of Us. He was a gifted physical actor in the tradition of the French mime (although he was Swiss), perhaps known better to us through Jacques Tati. He was the perfect choice to play someone who needs no intermediary with his surroundings.
I think of the film as Boudu’s revenge. He wanted to die, but Lestingois interfered. He wasn’t interested in being housed – you note that he never really makes himself at home or seems to enjoy his surroundings (sleeping on the more comfortable floor, standing in the doorway of the bookshop) – but found some sexual intrigue to keep him interested. He became despondent when he lost his companion, his dog, and really only wanted companionship in the first place. The Lestingois household wanted him as a project, and when he spit on Baudelaire and the rest of their high ideals without any malice except for that of being a man, he was no longer welcome.
Now, I certainly have a problem with the rape scene, played in the usual manner of the woman liking it in the end. Here is where Boudu lives up to his embodiment of the unconscious (water being a symbol of the unconscious and something M. Lestingois connects with for the first time in a long time when he plunges into the Seine and Boudu plunges into his life). The Freudian implications of this scene for Mme. Lestingois are obvious, another bourgeois philosophy that Renoir either consciously or unconsciously sends up. The maid as gold digger is another.
It’s interesting to me that in a more modern adaptation of this play, namely Down and Out in Beverly Hills, the women make the choice to be seduced and Nick Nolte’s character actually radicalizes the maid against her bourgeouis oppressor.
Ed, I love how you put it: the ragged casualness of Renoir’s aesthetic. That’s it perfectly.
I too was troubled by the fact that Emma came up smiling after her rape. It is of course a convention in film and television, which I think is because the means of production was completely in male hands, until very recently, and it’s a fond male fantasy in some quarters that women secretly want to be dominated and treated roughly.
Like you, I love the fact that Boudu spits in Balzac’s “The physiology of marriage,” and that its finally what sends him over the brink, and that it’s so ironic.
It’s an interesting thought that perhaps from the beginning Boudu is a cracked image of Lestingois. He certainly is in the end.
“Boudu is more hands on and more apt to take what he wants.”
Boudu kind of seems beyond “freedom” and more like anarchy in the extreme, which, Rick, you rightly refer to often as “chaos”.
Bill, I face Lestingois’ problem daily. I administer a small fund — really only several thousand a month — for helping folks with their light bills, food, gas, etc. As you can imagine, lately its been quite busy. Most of the folks who ask for it are appropriately servile, but occasionally there’s a Boudu, who is demanding and not particularly grateful. What do I do? Not give them help because of their attitude?
Fox, very good point about Boudu:
Boudu obviously doesn’t want to be taken from his station in life. He is under-class and he wants to be there. He prefers it.
He not only prefers it, he can’t imagine any other way of living. One of the dominant driving forces of the humor in this film is Boudu’s complete incomprehension of anything having to do with bourgeois life. Confronted with a tie, he doesn’t get what it’s for or why he would need it (and Lestingois is hard-pressed to explain). He doesn’t understand, and doesn’t want to understand, the rules and behaviors of the bourgeois household; he’s much happier at the end, lying in the grass in rags he stole from a scarecrow, munching on bread he’s begged from a couple of strangers. He seems to like being poor.
It’s an interesting subtext in the film, one that almost lends itself to a right-wing interpretation: the poor don’t want charity, the poor are happy being poor, the poor would lift themselves up if they really wanted to. I don’t know if that’s what Renoir was aiming for — in fact I suspect it’s not — but it’s one of the multivalent meanings that emerge from the film’s complicated treatment of class distinctions. As much as Renoir mocks and satirizes middle class pretensions, he’s also in a sense excusing them from any responsibility to help those less fortunate. In a way, Lestingois opens himself up to mockery because he goes out of his way to help another human being. It’s his charity that’s being mocked, although at the same time Renoir mocks the other middle-class men who do nothing but watch and cheer and seem proud of their class even though they’ve done nothing.
Yeah, Fox, that’s the way I read him. He is dangerously “free,” a force that threatens the order of society. Perhaps that’s one reason folks like that are marginalized; we instinctively know this, and fear for our livelihoods. But that’s just a thought.
Nice essay, Rick. I happen to like Boudu as the anarchist troublemaker who can mock the French bourgeois with one roll of his eyes. The film struck me as oddly reminiscent of Grand Illusion in the way it moves from interior constriction to much more expansive long shots towards the end. Boudu rebels against the entanglements of society, social niceties like marriage, formal clothing, cleanliness–he’s the first hippie. And I know that I should acknowledge the ambiguity of Boudu’s position in the film, but I wonder whether Renoir’s sympathies ultimately favored the bum. For all of his flaws, Boudu can be spontaneous whereas everyone’s else behavior is dictated by formula.
I was taken by how accurate Simon’s portrayal was. Anyone here ever worked with the homeless through a charity function, shelter or church? Or just spent time talking with them? I have and due to mental illness with many of them they behave very much like Simon. They are ungrateful. They are undemanding. That’s a part of why they’re homeless because a mental deficiency has never allowed them to be a functioning member of society. They truly don’t know how to act, how to be polite and it throws the middle class off-balance. In many situations I’ve had to remind myself, “He’s got mild schizophrenia, that’s why he’s telling you you’re awful and the food you just gave him sucks.” Any one of us would thank the person helping us and be grateful. As such we expect the same behavior from a homeless person but THEY’RE NOT THE SAME. And it’s maddening to realize that. We forget that not everyone with a mental illness gets treatment and the proper medication. So anyway, Simon’s absolutely perfect performance is the first thing I wanted to mention.
And Bill, that’s why he seems drunk to me. It’s the off-ness of his mental state.
Also, I liked how at the end they’re all naked behind the bushes. It’s hard to notice at first and there’s a body suit on the two women that you can just see but they’re intended to be nude. Boudu has moved on but they too have briefly been brought back to a perfect state of nature.
And does the spider in the credits mean anything to you Rick? Just curious.
God, Fox, I missed your first comment, in the flurry of initial posts. I love your pointing out Renoir’s essential humanism: he in the end is not mean, is not vicious in his lampooning of them. You’re right as well: he in the end prefers it, but not before he becomes Lestingois and actually tastes it. I think, actually, that it’s almost a whim that carries him off, rather than a conscious choice. He is much more elemental than the Lestingoises, much more at the beck and call of his “demons”
What do I do? Not give them help because of their attitude?
Well, no. But a “thank you” for a good deed is not an unreasonable expectation. It’s part of the social contract that Boudu upsets. He upsets everything about the social contract, at least the version that existed in France in the 1920s and 30s. He doesn’t say thank you, he rejects the finer things, he doesn’t respect marriage or secrets, or books. Or food or booze or beds.
If not for the sense of freedom that Boudu feels and shows when he’s living the life of a tramp, he might be comparable to a convict who’s been in prison for many, many years and, finding himself released, can’t deal with life on the outside. Some of those guys commit another crime so they can go back to prison, but Boudu just carries on living the same way he always did, but the effect of that way of life tends to be different when there’s a roof over your head.
Marilyn and Ed and Fox hit on some things I was thinking about. One of the things that bothers me with people helping the homeless (and Rick, now that I’ve read your comment I’m curious if you’ll agree) is the need they feel to “better” the homeless person. A person bringing them a sandwich instead of giving them money because they will just buy booze or insisting when giving them money that they buy food with it. I think, look, they’re homeless. They in shelters, they live in the cold. They get beaten, they’re dirty and occassionally they’re murdered and no one cares. So you know what? If they want to take the five or ten bucks I give them and go buy some gin then dammit, let them buy it. It’s easy for someone living in comfort to insist a homeless man not drink but if that’s the one comfort in their life, let them do it.
That’s what Boudu’s benefactors want to do: Control him. Make him better. And he’s not going to follow their instructions. In many ways this story is “The Revenge of Boudu.”
Jonathan, I have worked with the homeless, in shelters and one-on-one, and I too was struck by how spot-on Simon was. And schizophrenia is perhaps the diagnosis of choice for him. That’s why, as you point out, they are on the margins.
The first scene where I was really struck by Simon was that long shot across the street. He moved through purposeful society exactly as I’ve seen many a homeless do.
Jonathan, that’s true. I haven’t spent nearly as much time with the homeless or the genuinely mentally ill as you probably have, but I have had some experience. So Lestingois and company’s reaction to his behavior would, I suppose, just serve to highlight their ignorance and smugness, and general apartness (what? It’s a word!) from the world they feel pretty certain they have a handle on.
What are the two things they think has happened to Boudu at the end? Drowing and what? Whatever the other one is, it’s not “happily gone back to the life of a tramp”.
On what Marilyn said…
I think of the film as Boudu’s revenge. He wanted to die, but Lestingois interfered.
The thing I’m starting to wonder about Boudu is that I’m not so sure he wanted to die. Yes, he was water-logged when they pulled him out, but at the end – as Ed points out – he’s back to chillin’ with a goat and stealing rags off of a scarecrow. He doesn’t seem so willing to quit life anymore.
Also, at the end, it kinda feels like he “raped” the entire Lestingois household and walked away ethically unbothered. The bourgeouis see his derby hat floating down the stream, and they mourn him (albeit, probably insincerely… perhaps they are just doing their “civic duty” again), but I bet if Boudu saw them doing that, he would snicker.
That’s what Boudu’s benefactors want to do: Control him. Make him better. And he’s not going to follow their instructions. In many ways this story is “The Revenge of Boudu.”
Jonathan, your comments — and Marilyn’s and Ed’s — are spot on. And “control” is the operative word. There is a serious need for folks who help others to feel superior. That’s one of the reasons that helping others makes us “feel good” — it makes us feel righteous, better than them.
I once worked with a group of people — all right, it was a church — who sponsored a family for awhile. It all fell apart after they gave the father a shovel so he could use it to find work, or work in his garden, or something. Instead, he sold it for money, and that outraged them, and they broke their ties. We want to control what we give people, but it’s really not a gift if there are strings attached.
People I am with are very condemning of me when I give panhandlers money on the streets, for the reasons you stated.
As always, a great write-up, Rick, and already a long list of very insgighful comments.
Anyone else notice the scene, shortly after Boudu’s rescue, where he’s talking about wanting to get a bicycle, and Lestingois sort of ruffles his hair and scratches his head? It left the distinct impression that Lestingois sees Boudu more like a pet than like a fellow man. Not an entirely unkind attitude, but certainly a condescening one. And just like everyone thinks a puppy is cute until it chews up the sofa pillows and pees on the rug a few times, his attitude toward Boudu changes pretty quick after Boudu spits into the Balzac and polishes his shoes with the missus’ fine linens.
Most of my experience is just talking with them on the streets for decades in DC but I also help out in an organized manner where I work where we prepare food for shelters once a month and take them there. Considering most people’s views of tramps at this time was of the Okie, Hobo or Charlie Chaplin character, I’m still pretty amazed at how accurate and observant Simon was.
But enough of that.
I thought Sévérine Lerczinska was exceedingly cute and my favorite character in the movie. I can see why Boudu fell for her instead of Emma. Anne-Marie is playful and sweet, kind and helpful, attractive and common sensical. She embodies everything attractive and desirable that falls in the middle area between the bums and the booksellers.
Fox said: The thing I’m starting to wonder about Boudu is that I’m not so sure he wanted to die. Yes, he was water-logged when they pulled him out, but at the end – as Ed points out – he’s back to chillin’ with a goat and stealing rags off of a scarecrow. He doesn’t seem so willing to quit life anymore.
I think that’s very true. One of things about Boudu is that his connections to anything outside himself are very transitory. He is grieving for his missing dog at the beginning, so much so that it drives him to a suicide attempt, but after Lestingois saves him, he nearly forgets all about the dog and has little more urge to do himself in. He seems to live very moment by moment, which again, is probably a realistic depiction of the homeless life. Also worth noting is that though Boudu tries to drown himself at the beginning of the film, he swims perfectly well at the end, which calls into question whether or not his leap into the river was actually a serious suicide attempt.
“they gave the father a shovel so he could use it to find work, or work in his garden, or something. Instead, he sold it for money”
Ha, ha. Good for him!
Jonathan-
I didn’t even notice the “naked behind the bushes” moment. That’s interesting and I’d like to go back now and look at that.
But on the reality of Simon’s portrayal…
I’m not denying that it’s accurate, I trust you guys that it is, but I honestly don’t think it was Renoir’s intention to take it to the level of displaying a homeless person’s serious schizophrenia or mental illness. I mean, after all, Boudu is used as a comic plot device, and seems at least as coherent and balanced enough to get off some witty one-liners.
Fox, you raise a good point: perhaps he’s not interested in really killing himself, but perhaps it’s a symptom of whatever mental disability he has …
but I honestly don’t think it was Renoir’s intention to take it to the level of displaying a homeless person’s serious schizophrenia or mental illness. I mean, after all, Boudu is used as a comic plot device, and seems at least as coherent and balanced enough to get off some witty one-liners.
I don’t know Fox, watching the supplement on the DVD with Renoir’s intro he makes it clear that he wanted to film Boudu/Simon in the streets incognito because he wanted him to be a real tramp. I don’t know if they knew that Simon was mimicking schizophrenia, just that he was accurately mimicking a homeless person.
And Ed, I thought the same thing. When I saw him swimming I thought two things: One, he can swim so maybe he just wanted attention and not really to drown and Two, no one rushed to save him this time. They got themselves ashore. Lestingois didn’t even look back.
Also worth noting is that though Boudu tries to drown himself at the beginning of the film, he swims perfectly well at the end, which calls into question whether or not his leap into the river was actually a serious suicide attempt.
Damn fine observation Ed! That is way us TOERIFC people are so awesome.
I was also wondering if Boudu was actually trying to kill himself — that would seem to go against the idea that he was happy as a tramp — but it does beg the question of why he did actually jump in the river.
And Fox, I also sort of doubt that depicting the mental illnesses of the homeless is what Renoir had in mind. As you say, he’s a comic figure, and he’s really played as a comic drunk, and someone who is maybe a bit debauched, which still makes me wonder about the scene where he spits out the wine, and favors water. If the literal translation of the title is Boudu Saved from Water, what does his preference for water in that scene indicate? That water is his natural environment — no, that doesn’t make any sense (unless he’s a merman. I think I just busted this movie wide open!). That chaos is, as Rick says? Probably. It also indicates that maybe he was just going for a swim, and not trying to kill himself. Is there some baptism element to all this?
And I think that you might be right, Fox, about Renoir’s intentions, but as always, trust the art, not the artist. As Renoir says in one of the supplements, he’d already shot Simon as a tramp at the end of “La Chienne”, and knew he was right for the part. I think Simon’s perf reflects a lot of study and observation of the real thing.
Is there some baptism element to all this?
Perhaps … one thing we haven’t mentioned are all the shots of Notre Dame. What does Renoir mean to suggest by his juxtaposition of the church with all these goings on?
As Renoir says in one of the supplements, he’d already shot Simon as a tramp at the end of “La Chienne”, and knew he was right for the part. I think Simon’s perf reflects a lot of study and observation of the real thing
That’s the supplement I’m talking about. They didn’t know all the mental illness aspects at that time, they just knew Simon did a damn realistic job of portraying a tramp as they called them back then.
As for the title, maybe it all means this: Boudu life is one of flowing with the currents. It’s literalized when he leaps in the river and Lestingois interrupts him midstream. He creates an involuntary break in Boudu’s natural flow that Boudu finally returns to quite by accident at the end. Water is Boudu’s medium. Once back in it his life gets back on track.
I don’t know Fox, watching the supplement on the DVD with Renoir’s intro he makes it clear that he wanted to film Boudu/Simon in the streets incognito because he wanted him to be a real tramp.
Oh, I totally agree Jonathan, and I think Renoir is sympathetic to Boudu (ie the homeless), as I think he is to the upper/middle-classes as well, I just think that if he wanted to highlight the plight and marginalization of Boudu or the homeless as a whole, then he wouldn’t have done so in a comedy.
But that’s what I love about Renoir. I think he loved everybody, and as critical as he was of societies and class, and as much fun he had goofing on their faults, his films never felt like a blanket condemnation of a particular group or lifestyle. And maybe this was never more evident than in – as Rick points out – The Rules of the Game. If I remember it correctly, everyone seems to get their proper prodding, but it never feels like Renoir sees anyone as less than simply flawed humans.
Boudu life is one of flowing with the currents. It’s literalized when he leaps in the river and Lestingois interrupts him midstream. He creates an involuntary break in Boudu’s natural flow that Boudu finally returns to quite by accident at the end. Water is Boudu’s medium. Once back in it his life gets back on track
As good an interpretation as any.
if he wanted to highlight the plight and marginalization of Boudu or the homeless as a whole, then he wouldn’t have done so in a comedy.
Perhaps. But as activists know, there’s nothing the people in power hate more than being made fun of, and there’s nothing that destabilizes a class that is in power more than ridicule. It’s one of the prime arrows in the quiver of non-violent activism.
So further back I wrote, ” thought Sévérine Lerczinska was exceedingly cute and my favorite character in the movie. I can see why Boudu fell for her instead of Emma. Anne-Marie is playful and sweet, kind and helpful, attractive and common sensical. She embodies everything attractive and desirable that falls in the middle area between the bums and the booksellers.”
Anyone have any thoughts on her or any of the other characters. I’m just curious what everyone’s thought is on characters outside of Boudu or do most of us just view them as “types” put in for Boudu to maneuver around and not much as characters on their own? Emma definitely seems fairly free of any character depth to me as if Renoir or the original playwright didn’t put a lot of thought or interest into fleshing her out.
And if so, that is the characters are just types, aren’t they guilty of marginalizing the middle class?
And Fox, I also sort of doubt that depicting the mental illnesses of the homeless is what Renoir had in mind. As you say, he’s a comic figure, and he’s really played as a comic drunk, and someone who is maybe a bit debauched, which still makes me wonder about the scene where he spits out the wine, and favors water.
Agreed, Bill. And I think the fact that Renoir avoids giving us any background info on Renoir (besides the fact that he has never kissed a girl… which is most probably a lie) that it’s hard for us to make any conclusions about who Boudu is beyond what we see on screen.
Jonathan, Emma is free of character depth, but I think she is the most deftly-played of the lot. Rather than going over-the-top, as she could have, she underplays slightly, and it’s funnier for it.
As far as Lerczinska goes, I especially liked the way she hung onto every word that dripped out of Lestingois’ mouth, at least until Boudu came into some money.
But I think to an extent you’re right: the other characters are in a sense foils for Boudu. Granval is such a wily actor that he is very likable in another role that could have been one-note.
Jonathan – to answer your questions, I also thought Emma was kind of a cypher, more a type than a character. And, as has been mentioned before, the whole idea that a roll in the hay with Boudu is all she needs to loosen up, offended me. I think Anne Marie was a better developed character for me, although I sometimes wondered why she was always smiling. When you wonder whether the middle class is trivialized/marginalized here, I think you may be onto something.
To revisit the conversation about Boudu himself – while I greatly admired Simon’s performance, I wasn’t crazy about Boudu. Some of the physical comedy bits were great (particularly his ‘hanging in the doorway’ trick) but his complete indifference to the concerpt of personal space made me nervous on everyone’s behalf.
BTW – I have several meetings so won’t be able to be on the comments thread too much till much later. I’ll be back!
Fox, I think that Simon spent a fair amount of time observing the homeless and, in a sense, he mimics what he sees, and very well, too. I’m not so sure we should jump to the conclusion that Renoir and Simon had no conception of mental illness — Eugen Bleuler coined the phrase “chizophrenia” in 1908 to describe the disease, and as Marilyn points out, this is post-Freud.
Pat, I agree wholeheartedly — the invasion of space makes me nervous as well. Kind of like the “close-talker” of Seinfeldian fame. I think that is part of Boudu’s danger, his transgressive-ness.
I still think there’s a lot going on in that scene with the wine. I can stretch it to say that Boudu turned wine into water, but I don’t know where I think I’d be going with that. Still, with the references to Greek mythology, and wine being such a big deal in those, maybe Renoir is trying to subvert what we think of as the bacchanlian aspects of all this. Water is pure, so Boudu is living his life in the purest sense. He sometimes behaves like his lives in a bacchanal, but rejects many of the trappings of such a life. Lestingois, meanwhile, lives a more traditionally debauched life — wine, good food, wife and mistress — but tries to keep it under wraps. He’s not honest about it. He’s not even honest in his love for Anne Marie, the mistress, because when she swings towards Boudu, he basically just shrugs it off.
Not to belabor the mental illness angle, but Renoir came of age during the time of the birth of psychoanalysis, which had it’s loci in Germany and France. As part of the bourgeoisie himself, he was highly educated, so I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine him being very up on stuff like schizophrenia.
Jonathan-
Yeah. I can’t think of any other characters that really stand out to me. Everyone outside of Boudu seem to be one giant whole character… it’s “Boudu” and then “Society”.
But I’m still not so sure Renoir is damning the upper/middle Society for marginalizing Boudu. I think he damns their manners (ie the cop shrugging off Boudu’s dog but actively rounding up the troops for the society woman’s dog) and their intentions (the lady “teaching” her daughter about the poor), but doesn’t blame them for Boudu’s position in life. If he did, then why would he end the film with Boudu being much more content as lower-class?
That’s a thing that’s always bugged me about the discussion of class warfare or class inequalities. Rarely is there an acknowledgement that some people in the lower-classes prefer being there and don’t want to be pulled out, just like Boudu didn’t want to be pulled out of the water.
He’s not even honest in his love for Anne Marie, the mistress, because when she swings towards Boudu, he basically just shrugs it off.
Good point, but I don’t think he just shrugs it off. He is in a dilemma: he’s got a mistress, his wife has a lover, and they just discover one another’s problem. As he says: for once, nature and “modern morality” are in accord. He sees the marrying off of his mistress to Boudu as solving his problems. I imagine that he would go right back to her — or maybe both — when the wedding is over.
Fox, I think that Simon spent a fair amount of time observing the homeless and, in a sense, he mimics what he sees, and very well, too. I’m not so sure we should jump to the conclusion that Renoir and Simon had no conception of mental illness
But Rick, doesn’t that go against your comment of “trust the art, not the artist”? Isn’t “the art”, Boudu Saved From Drowning and not any supplemental material?
I never said that Renoir and Simon had no conception of the homeless, I just think y’all might be piling something on to the movie that I didn’t see in it myself.
Nice review Rick. I never understood why Boudu was acting drunk all the time (even though he never drinks)? I agree with Bill in that Boudu was ungrateful and Lestingois did deserve thanks. But I felt Boudu never wanted to be saved since the reason Boudu drowned was the loss of his dog -his only companion and that’s why he acted the way he did in his saviors home. May be when Lestingois saved him he didn’t find any purpose to behave with him and with people around him. He didn’t have any true connection with the world, none at all. Also I think Boudu felt the reason Lestingois is keeping him in his place is to make him his servant, and he definitely didn’t like to work, otherwise why be a bum.
Lestingois for me was a good man as he cared for others (saving some bum and giving shelter, food and clothes is a genuine kindness.
Rarely is there an acknowledgement that some people in the lower-classes prefer being there and don’t want to be pulled out, just like Boudu didn’t want to be pulled out of the water.
I’ve rarely met one of those, Fox … the folks who show up at my office, looking for help, all desperately want to be able to put food on the table, to pay their light bills, to send their kids to a good school. True, they may not want to be “pulled out”, because that implies that they are not in control of their own lives anymore, and that they have to live under the expectations of those doing the pulling.
Yeah, I didn’t watch any of the supplements, either. Besides, homeless people are as often heavy drinkers as they are mentally ill (and they’re often both). Plus, Boudu is referred to throughout as a tramp, which brings with it a kind of boozy connotation. I only mention all of this so that people will start agreeing with me about the wine scene.
Bill said: I still think there’s a lot going on in that scene with the wine. I can stretch it to say that Boudu turned wine into water, but I don’t know where I think I’d be going with that.
And then at the end, when Boudu grabs the scarecrow, he briefly carries it over his shoulder and it looks so much like Christ carrying the cross that I can’t imagine the reference was unintentional. But like you, I’m not sure where that would lead — does Renoir want us to think that Boudu is a Christ allegory? Or is he simply making fun of the whole idea of literary Christ allegories? I don’t know. A lot of the film’s ideas are, in general, frustratingly blurry and ambiguous, which is interesting but also makes it very difficult to pin down exactly what Renoir is trying to say here.
And I agree with several other comments about the vague definition of the characters, which to me extends to everyone except Boudu, and maybe even to him as well. Most of these characters are very much “types” rather than people, and that includes the plump, giggly, flirtatious maid. The performances are fine, but the characters are very surface-level.
But Rick, doesn’t that go against your comment of “trust the art, not the artist”? Isn’t “the art”, Boudu Saved From Drowning and not any supplemental material?
Not at all … perhaps he didn’t know anything about mental illness, perhaps it was just mimicry on Simon’s part, but we can’t rule it out that they did. I’m simply saying they could have, given the times they lived in and where they lived.