Boudu Saved From Drowning

1932, Movie, NR, 84 mins

BOUDU SAVED FROM DROWNING | BOUDU SAUVE DES EAUX
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This social comedy is another masterpiece from Renoir. Made in 1932 but lost, then finally released in 1967 in the US, this film is a timeless satire on middle-class values centering on Boudu (Michel Simon), an archetypal tramp about to commit suicide in grief, apparently, over the loss of his dog. He leaps into the Seine from the Pont des Arts, but is saved by bourgeois bookseller Lestingois (Charles Granval), who takes Boudu home and tries to start him on the road to a productive, responsible life. Boudu, however, is a protohippie--a long-haired, bearded believer in freedom and anarchy. During his stay in Lastingois' very proper household, he turns the place into a shambles, seduces Lestingois' wife (Marcelle Hainia), and, after he strikes it rich in the lottery, marries the family's gold-digging maid (Severine Lerczynska). He is then faced with the choice of living as a socially responsible adult in a tuxedo or reasserting his own independence. Told in Renoir's characteristically liberating realist humanist manner and exquisitely photographed, the story is immeasurably enhanced by Simon's extraordinary portrayal of Boudu. As Renoir has written: "Everything that an actor can be in a film, Michel Simon is in BOUDU. Everything!" Crudely remade in 1986 as DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS, starring Nick Nolte. leave a comment
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Boudu Saved From Drowning
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