In the 1930s, Renoir was at his most political, creating a series of Leftist films that satirized middle-class values and took to task the indulgent French class system. Boudu fits right into this period, as its class-based farce and fundamental mockery of everything civilized made it so controversial that police were forced to shut it down at several theaters because the outcry from audiences was so immense. (Renoir wouldn’t get a reaction like that again until his belatedly appreciated masterpiece The Rules of the Game in 1939, which so upset the audience that one man threatened to burn down the theater.)

The great Swiss-born actor Michel Simon (who worked with Renoir on five films) plays Boudu, a homeless vagrant who decides to drown himself in the Seine after his dog runs away. The film’s early passages are all sneaky set-up, as Renoir and Simon suggest that Boudu is a sad victim of society, driven do far down on the scale of humanity that he would rather die than go on living. His attempts to locate his dog, the one creature on earth that seems to love him, is met with indifference by others around him, including a police office who gruffly rebuffs his request for help, but then turns and offers complete assistance to a wealthy woman who has lost her Pekingese, valued at 10,000 francs.

Boudu is rescued from his suicide attempt by Edouard Lestingois (Charles Granval), a comfortably well-off bookstore owner. Edouard brings Boudu back to his house and insists on helping him in every way he can -- giving him clothes and food and a place to sleep. It is at this point that Renoir springs his trap, revealing that the shaggy Boudu is not some powerless sad sack, but rather a feisty, unbridled, and ultimately lecherous free spirit who takes everything offered him and not only refuses to return gratitude, but often spits (literally and figuratively) in the faces of those who would help him.

Eating sardines with his hand, spitting in a prized copy of Balzac, and wiping his shoes on a satin bedcover, Boudu is an untamable force unto himself, a raging id bouncing off the walls of the tightly cloistered Lestingois home. Renoir contrasts Boudu’s animalistic freedom with the button-down repression of the Lestingois family, which also includes Edouard’s prissy wife Emma (Marcelle Hainia) and their young maid, Anne-Marie (Sévérine Lerczinska), with whom Edouard is having an affair. While Edouard conducts his affair discreetly and behind closed doors, thus maintaining his idea of “decorum,” Boudu revels in his randiness, shamelessly chasing both women around the house and eventually bedding one and marrying the other.

Boudu Saved From Drowning is a frequently hilarious send-up of middle-class values, albeit one that wears its message a little too loudly and proudly. Yet, that’s not an entirely fair criticism, since Renoir clearly wants the film itself to reflect Boudu’s anarchic spirit. To have taken a more discreet or subtle route with any facet of the film would have been to submit to the very bourgeois values Renoir was lampooning.

Copyright ©2005 James Kendrick

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