Boudu Saved From Drowning
(Boudu sauvé des eaux)
With Michel Simon, Charles Granval, Marcelle Hainia.
France, 1932, 35mm, black & white, 85 min.
French with English subtitles.
Print source: Institut Français
Renoir’s fourth, last and most fruitful collaboration with the great Swiss actor Michel Simon (in the only film he ever produced) provided both with a considerable canvas on which to exercise their greatest strengths: Renoir executes his most pointed satire of the middle classes, and Simon delivers a charming, slapstick comic performance as Boudu, a hapless tramp who, depressed after losing his dog, decides to take his own life by jumping into the Seine. Liberal-minded bourgeois bookseller Lestingois (wonderfully played by Charles Granval) jumps into the river to save the drowning Boudu and proceeds to adopt and attempt to domesticate the old hobo. The comic scenes that follow provide ample opportunities for Simon to shine in a role that Renoir thought “might have been made for that brilliant actor.”
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
The Diary of a Chambermaid
This Land is Mine
The Woman on the Beach
Catherine, or A Life Without Joy
The Southerner
The Little Theatre of Jean Renoir
The Elusive Corporal
The Testament of Dr. Cordelier
Boudu Saved From Drowning
Elena and Her Men
Jean Renoir, the Boss, Part 2: Directing the Actor
