ackstasis Review of Boudu Saved from Drowning

Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932)

"Even so, we have a piano because we are respectable people"

[6/10 · 7 July 2011]

Everybody seems to be sleeping around in a Renoir film. 'Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932)' features Charles Granval as Monsieur Lestingois, an upright middle-class gentleman who generously devotes himself to helping others... but who is also sleeping with the maid. Lestingois saves the life of Boudu (Michel Simon), a wandering tramp who jumps into the Seine, and offers the man shelter in his home. Boudu is vulgar and messy, but his benefactor selflessly persists, even though his ungrateful guest spends most of his time making sleazy advances towards the maid and forcibly seducing Mrs Lestingois. Renoir's comedic cynicism is in full swing here. The previous year had seen Chaplin release 'City Lights (1931),' his penultimate outing as the Little Tramp, and Boudu is certainly intended to be the polar opposite of Chaplin's kindly, lovelorn vagrant. A late twist of fortune (reminiscent of the tacked-on studio ending to Murnau's 'The Last Laugh (1923)') is amusingly abandoned in the final moments, as Boudu shuns the opulence of middle-class life for the unpretentious simplicity of the road. Renoir's camera, accompanied by the merry strains of the Blue Danube waltz, contemplatively regards Boudu's discarded top hat as it drifts downstream – just like its former owner, happy to drift towards an unknown fate.