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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Ok, Bill, I agree …
The performances are fine, but the characters are very surface-level.
That is, as I’m sure you know, business as usual when it comes to satire. If the characters are too fully developed, then they stop representing what is being satirized.
This movie feels sort of like Bunuel in that sense, or some Bunuel, at least. For some reason, The Milky Way is suddenly springing to mind.
. I imagine that he would go right back to her — or maybe both — when the wedding is over.
That’s exactly what is shown in the final shot of them naked in the bushes. Lestingois is in the middle with his arms around both. Neither his mistress or wife is showing disapproval of his arm being around the other.
Ed, good pick-up of the carrying the “cross” over his shoulder. I have no idea, either, if Boudu is a Christ figure or not. I think the ambiguity you point out is one of the most beguiling features of this film. Renoir didn’t make it to be analyzed, he made it for the love of film. That’s for me very clear from the movie.
And Ed, thinking about it a bit, I have to lean towards the idea that Renoir is satirizing the idea of Christ allegories, because Boudu-as-Christ just falls apart. Doesn’t it?
You’re right, Bill, satire very much deals in “types.” And seriously, I noticed the wine thing too, I just didn’t know what to make of it. I never interpreted Boudu as drunk … especially after he refused the wine.
Perhaps it’s just another way that Renoir is showing us how counter-cultural Boudu is. France is, after all, a wine culture, wine is at the very heart of it. I remember taking one of my French collaborators out to dinner one time in Montpelier, and he took 20 minutes of back-and-forth consultation with the chef to choose the wine. Perhaps Boudu’s rejection of wine is another way of his rejecting normative French culture.
I get nothing from a Christ allegory here. Except for water/wine and a cross I don’t see where any of that would come into play. Besides, Melissa Mathison didn’t write it.
I think Bill’s more on track with the Merman thing. Okay, he’s not, but I wish he was because Mermen are far too often marginalized in our society.
Now, jokes aside, to address something Fox said earlier about some not wanting to be pulled out. Rick, it sounds like the people who come to you would be more like me, someone with a family who perhaps lost their job and needs help. But I think Fox is talking about something else altogether. There was a series of episodes on the homeless on PBS back in 80’s or early 90’s (back when Mitch Snyder was always in the news) and I distinctly remember a few homeless they spoke to in Southern California where there is no fear of freezing to death or dying in a hurricane and several did indeed like their lifestyle. They were lucid and clear and several had held jobs and responsibility before until they tired of it all and wanted to be homeless, living on the beach and getting food from a shelter.
Now before Fox jumps all over that, it was only the SoCal homeless that I recall saying that. No one wants to be homeless in Minnesota in the middle of winter and more often than not mental illness plays a hand.
I remember taking one of my French collaborators out to dinner
I always suspected Rick worked with the Vichy Government.
Boudu-as-Christ just falls apart. Doesn’t it?
Not at all … Christ was very much a marginal figure in his day, he was on the outside of the theocracy that ruled Jerusalem, and viewed very much as a danger to Roman control of the city. That’s why he was killed, sacrificed if you will to keep society stable.
I’m not saying that Renoir is serious about it in this film, just that Boudu would make a perfectly good Christ figure if that were his intention. He is, in a sense, sacrificed — kept on the margins, etc. — because he is a threat to stability of Bourgeois culture.
Again, the ambiguity of it all is one of my favorite qualities of Renoir.
Yeah, the Christ allegory doesn’t really make much sense as a whole — which is why those two pointed references to it are so confounding. It might just be yet another sign that Boudu doesn’t respect anything — not religion, and not the conventions of literary symbolism either!
Now, jokes aside, to address something Fox said earlier about some not wanting to be pulled out. Rick, it sounds like the people who come to you would be more like me, someone with a family who perhaps lost their job and needs help. But I think Fox is talking about something else altogether. There was a series of episodes on the homeless on PBS back in 80’s or early 90’s (back when Mitch Snyder was always in the news) and I distinctly remember a few homeless they spoke to in Southern California where there is no fear of freezing to death or dying in a hurricane and several did indeed like their lifestyle. They were lucid and clear and several had held jobs and responsibility before until they tired of it all and wanted to be homeless, living on the beach and getting food from a shelter.
Now before Fox jumps all over that, it was only the SoCal homeless that I recall saying that. No one wants to be homeless in Minnesota in the middle of winter and more often than not mental illness plays a hand.
Jonathan & Rick & everyone-
And my point wasn’t intended to be totally about some homeless people “wanting” to be homeless, but the idea that “higher-minded”, more effluent people sometimes assume that the people below them are unhappy in their life and need their assistance. I mean, isn’t that a large part of what Boudu is about? The mother of the little girl assumes that Boudi wants money money for bread. Why? Because he’s a homeless dude sitting on the bench. But then he gives it to a rich dude getting out of his car.
Jonathan, I think you’re right: there are homeless who want it that way, for whatever reason, and let’s face it: many of the homeless are on the streets because of a drug or alcohol problem. The question is: do I help them anyway? At the shelters, the answer is generally “yes.”
In Atlanta, when i lived there, there were an estimated 20,000 homeless (I suspect there are more today). they are there, in part, because of the mild climate, and in part because Atlanta is the big transport hub.
The people I see in my office are rarely homeless, but they are chronically poor. They are 99% African American, many of them single with kids, and working minimum wage jobs. But, as you say, the homeless are generally different kinds of folks.
I’m not saying that Renoir is serious about it in this film, just that Boudu would make a perfectly good Christ figure if that were his intention. He is, in a sense, sacrificed — kept on the margins, etc. — because he is a threat to stability of Bourgeois culture.
But who does he save? The way the film ends seems to be sending up the idea of saving those people. I’m not saying the imagery isn’t there, just that it’s not meant to be literal or serious, which is what I should have said the first time.
Fox, I loved when he gives the guy in the car his five Francs. It’s a great way to show how off Boudu is in his thinking from everyone else. Also, it’s a joke about Boudu’s quickly shifting focus. When the rich guy can’t find any money for a tip Boudu gives him the money he has, intending, I believe, for the rich guy to give it back to him. Then after a couple of seconds he just walks away. Boudu is nuts and that scene early on illustrates it well.
But who does he save?
In a sense, he saves the Lestingoises … we see them happily cuddled together, naked as Jonathan points out, at the end.
But Christ figures in film — which I tend to notice, and perhaps over-notice — don’t have to be completely schematic to be there. And sometimes, they are there whether intended or not: Western culture is soaked in Christianity whether you like it or not, sometimes references just kind of creep in.
But as I said, I don’t know whether that was intentional on Renoir’s part, or he intended it as part of the lampoon.
When the rich guy can’t find any money for a tip Boudu gives him the money he has, intending, I believe, for the rich guy to give it back to him. Then after a couple of seconds he just walks away. Boudu is nuts and that scene early on illustrates it well.
It’s not an accident that Renoir follows up immediately the scene with the five francs with Lestingois giving the books to the student. Lestingois has a flowery pompous reason for his generosity, Boudu just does it.
Rick said: They are 99% African American, many of them single with kids, and working minimum wage jobs.
Which indirectly raises the issue of just how grounded Renoir’s film is in a very specific sociopolitical situation and culture — the same film remade in modern America would be very different, and would necessarily deal with racial issues among others (and the rape would if anything be even more uncomfortable in light of enduring American issues about black men and white women). Renoir’s satire is broad and in some ways universal, but in many other ways it’s specifically lampooning the French bourgeois of his own time, much as Rules of the Game took aim at a very specific social set within pre-WW2 France.
It’s not an accident that Renoir follows up immediately the scene with the five francs with Lestingois giving the books to the student. Lestingois has a flowery pompous reason for his generosity, Boudu just does it.
But I don’t think Boudu does anything out of generosity. He just does whatever pops into his head to do. He didn’t give the guy money because he wanted to help him out, but rather because he didn’t care about the money himself.
Ed, I think that’s right. It is in a sense specific for its time … and as Marilyn has pointed out, we’ve got a “remake” (actually, based on the same play) in “Down and Out in Beverly Hills,” which I have not seen recently enough to feel comfortable commenting on. Perhaps Marilyn will be back and talk more.
And Bill, I think you’re exactly right: he doesn’t do it out of generosity, it’s just on a whim, or because he’s nuts. That’s the contrast Renoir is trying to draw: between an unpredictable, and therefore dangerous, force of nature and predictable, safe, bourgeois culture.
But I don’t think Boudu does anything out of generosity. He just does whatever pops into his head to do. He didn’t give the guy money because he wanted to help him out, but rather because he didn’t care about the money himself.
Yeah, I never see Boudu as a generous person at any point in the movie. I think that scene is just Renoir making another joke about social assumptions.
At least the film’s representative from the safe, bourgeois culture was willing to save somebody’s life. Do any of us think Boudu would do the same? I don’t think he would.
I think it’s very hard for people safely gliding along socieity’s prefab tracks to place themselves in the context of someone who isn’t on those tracks. They seem irrational to us, they seem not to respect what we respect. Our society, however, is a construct like any other society. Cannibalism is honorable in some cultures; in ours, it’s horrifying. Which is more civilized? Usually the one that can dominate with superior fire power. A soft bourgeois family is no match for a streetwise guy like Boudu; their attempts to convert the native were doomed to failure because they offered him nothing he wanted. He was the one truly free person, owing nothing to anyone.
Do any of us think Boudu would do the same? I don’t think he would.
Neither do I. Remember the conversation he has with Anne-Marie, where he said Lestingois was irresponsible? That he didn’t know who he — Boudu — was, and yet he brought him into the home? He views that kind of generosity as an aberration, as we would expect from someone on the street, where it’s dog eat dog.
But think about that Rick. People of the bourgeois class would say the same thing – how could he bring a bum home? Think about Six Degrees of Separation They bring a young man who has learned their ways into their home and use him to close a lucrative deal. When they find out he has invited a street hustler into their home, they talk about escaping being murdered in their slepep.
In Down and Out in Beverly Hills the homeless character of Nick Nolte is a jerk in many ways and an ingrate like Boudu. But in the end of that take on the story he returns to the family because he now cannot live without them. While I believe Renoir’s to be better overall I am not going to slam Down and Out just because it’s a remake with Nolte, Dreyfuss and Midler. I think it did a lot of good things and one of them was that ending in which the two extremes of society become interdependent without even trying.
Hey, welcome back, Marilyn. I think your comments are spot on: it’s very difficult to put ourselves in somebody else’s place. And who said something about culture coming from the barrel of a gun? Marx?
Remember near the end where Lestingois babbles about “modern morality?” He’s just rectified the subversive, dangerous presence of Boudu with some Bourgeois construct about morality.
Down and Out in Beverly Hills is a very different film. Nolte wanted to be a part of society (my favorite scene is when he demonstrates to Dreyfuss that he really was an aspiring actor) and, in the end, got coopted. He wasn’t a happy homeless guy. Renoir’s aim is completely different – take a complete savage, like dropping the Wildman of Borneo, into a civilized bourgeois home in Paris and see how THEY cope.
Oh, I totally agree with you Marilyn … our comments crossed, I think. I do not think Boudu would do the same thing as Lestingois because he is not acculturated to do the same thing, not because he has a character defect.
But why should our bourgeois representative be so constantly looked down on? He’s not a great guy, he’s not even likable, but when it came down to the meat-and-potatoes, everyday morality, he stepped up. And why does someone have to be acculturated to saving someone’s life? Wouldn’t that be an instinct that you either have or you don’t?
Personally, I think Lestingois is an okay guy. Not many people would jump in to save someone and as the later medal scene makes clear he did not personally care for any recognition. And his marriage is loveless with both he and she doing what they want in their own worlds so his affair doesn’t exist on a level of the wife taking care of everything at home in Sunrise while the husband gets his jollies with the city woman on the side.
Renoir was trying to ridicule bourgeois society. Whether that’s a good thing or not is debatable, but he was taking solid aim at good intentions that disguise hypocrisy. Boudu was the rare bird who didn’t play along and listen to the hymns before eating at the soup kitchen. He didn’t ask for Lestingois’ intervention. I’ve heard it said in poorer neighborhoods that you really have to watch out when the “nice people” come to town. It’s the cry of the gentrified out of a home.
But Marilyn, he wasn’t out aggressively trying to “do good” (God forbid!). He just happened to see someone who he thought was in peril, and acted. There’s no way you can spin that where he comes out looking bad.
Bill, I don’t think generosity or compassion is instinctual. It is learned behavior, taught from childhood, and from what I’ve read, psychological studies generally back it up. But I don’t think it’s either nature or nurture, but a combination of both. Most people are capable of compassion, but the must learn it, either from their parents or society at large. There are people who seem to have something “missing,” some piece that makes them capable of compassion, and it’s generally thought that schizophrenia (for example) is caused by a combination of physiological and psychological factors.
If Boudu is schizophrenic, how can his behavior be his fault? The question is, if he’s been formed that way, by his experiences and/or his upbringing, is it any less his fault?
As Marilyn points out, the norms for behavior vary from culture to culture. That goes to the definition of being acculturated, I think, and is why I used the term for Boudu. Perhaps it wasn’t the best one to use.
I don’t think Lestingois is a horrible guy, either. I think he’s a type that Renoir set up to be poked fun at, but not at all mercilessly. Renoir, humanist that he is, loves his characters. He doesn’t despise any of them.
But Rick, you’re assuming Boudu is schizophrenic, which, like Fox, I think is a big leap. Apart from that, the act to save the life of someone in peril is not, I don’t think, necessarily an act of “generosity” or “compassion”. It’s an act of goodness, but the qualities you mention take too much thought. Anyway, my larger point is less that Boudu wouldn’t do what Lestingois did, but that maybe Lestingois doesn’t deserve all this condemnation for his bourgeois attitudes when most of the problems he faces in the film are built off of an act of complete selflessness.
Along with what Bill is saying, how do we know that Boudo isn’t acculturated. Y’all are placing a lot onto his character that Renoir didn’t give us. We don’t know the background of Boudu.
Bill – I think Lestingois’ action was benevolent. It’s why I emphasized in my very first comment hours ago that in saving Boudu from the waters (not water), he was behaving perhaps for the first time in a long time in a completely unguarded manner, what Schopenhauer considered the link in all humanity. Paraphrasing him, Joseph Campbell said, “Schopenhauer concludes that it is as though our lives were the features of the one great dream of a single dreamer in which all the dream characters dream, too; so that everything links to everything else, moved by the one will to life which is the universal will in nature.”
He and Boudu were connected in a single point in time, but once inside the bookshop, the connectedness broke down in the rituals of society.
As Marilyn points out, the norms for behavior vary from culture to culture
True, but everyone in the movie exists in French culture. Two different class levels, but the same culture nonetheless. And the “do-good” behavior occurs after the rescue. As I and Bill and maybe Fox, I can’t remember now, have said that was a good act done in the spur of the moment. It is after this that the do-gooding begins.
He didn’t ask for Lestingois’ intervention.
That’s true, Marilyn, but he sure didn’t seem to mind the perks of that intervention once he was inside Lestingois home. At that point, he took advantage of what was around him. I think if Boudu was truly “a rare bird” then he would have refused these things. I think he’s on equal footing with the rest of the characters in this movie… a flawed human.
Well, now I see Marilyn’s comment and she said almost exactly the same thing so just see her comment.
Bill, Not necessarily schizophrenic, but I do think he’s mentally ill. Anyway, I’m not convinced that Lestingois does it out of any great motives, I certainly don’t think it’s selflessness. I think he does it for the same reasons a lot of folks do: because he gets something out of it.
He chastises Boudu mightily — as does his wife, who actually says that Boudu owes them something for their trouble — for not being grateful. I think Lestingois — though he protests that he doesn’t want a medal — I think he expects the gratitude, because that’s what he gets out of it: a feeling of being above somebody, of having something over Boudu.
Is there anything wrong with that? Not necessarily. I am a great believer that good things get done for a variety of motives, and it’s often enough that they just get done.
Yeah but Fox, he doesn’t really accept those things. He’d be happy to not have any of their stuff. He doesn’t want the tie, he doesn’t want to shine his shoes, etc. Then when he falls in the water he leaves. He does stick around you’re right and he could have left immediately but I think his behavior, in a way, was him refusing what he was being given.
In a weird Boudu kind of a way. Maybe he’s not a Christ figure, maybe he’s a Buddha figure. Finally bringing everyone by the end to a state of nirvana, or at least a zen acceptance of life.
I certainly don’t think it’s selflessness. I think he does it for the same reasons a lot of folks do: because he gets something out of it.
Wait a minute. Do you mean the do-good stuff or the rescue? Because he runs right down when Boudu jumps. So are you saying he is thinking on the way down, “I’m going to get this and this and this out of this rescue!” Because I think that’s quite a stretch. Not impossible but I don’t buy it.
Sometimes, I wish we were talking face to face so there wasn’t this lag. Right on with your Schopenhauer analogy, Marylin.
To reiterate, I like Lestingois too, and I think he did a good thing, but I don’t particularly care one way or another about his motives, I just don’t think they’re particularly pure.
For all we know, Lestignois may not have demanded gratitude if he hadn’t gotten its exact opposite. Boudu trashes his home! Lestignois could very well have been perfectly fine without a thank you if Boudu hadn’t turned his life upside down.
And the way the rescue scene is shot, Lestignois sees Boudu about to jump, concludes (rightly or wrongly, but at least reasonably) that he’s witnessing a suicide attempt, and rushes to help. Do you really think, the way the scene is presented, that we’re supposed to think that Lestignois thought “Here’s my chance!” He didn’t have time to think, as is often, if not always, the case in these situations. His instinct was to do something good, but, instinct being what it is, the idea of it being a good thing never entered his mind. Add that to the fact that he was technically putting his own life at risk by saving Boudu, and we end up with “selflessness”.
I’m starting to miss comments, too. I also missed Marilyn’s “Schopenhauer” point, and it’s a good one, but I still can’t bring myself to judge Lesitgnois for his anger at Boudu’s subsequent behavior (see last comment! See it!!!)
Sometimes, I wish we were talking face to face so there wasn’t this lag.
Let’s all meet at that place that sells donuts by that building where they have that stuff. I’ll be right there.
Jonathan: no, not the original rescue. I’ll buy that that is a spur of the moment thing.
(see last comment! See it!!!)
And Bill, see my comment before that where I pretty much agreed with you. Now get to the donut building!