Boudu Saved From Drowning

When I hear the words 'French', 'comedy' and '1930s' used together I tend to have certain preconceptions in my mind; namely the idea that I'm not going to find it funny or enjoy it very much. Boudu Saved From Drowning smashed all such preconceptions, not only is it incredibly funny but it also features the sort of uniquely hilarious central performance that ranks as iconic. Michel Simon has gone down in film history as one of the more fascinating actors on and off the screen, and his performance here as the Parisian hobo Boudu must rank as one of the alltime greatest cinematic creations. Not only is Boudu the reason for most of the film's entertainment value, he's also the embodiment of its thematic core. Boudu Saved From Drowning is a comedy of classism, highlighting the fundamental and irreconcilable differences between the bourgeoisie and the free spirited.

Boudu is a homeless drunk living in a park with his dog. When his dog goes missing he begins asking people to help him look for it... the reactions he gets from the more class-bound citizens are, as expected, uniformly negative. A cop even threatens to throw Boudu in gaol when he asks for help! And to highlight this hypocrisy further, when a rich lady asks for this cop to help search for her dog, himself and three other men practically fall over themselves to help her. Anyway, Boudu then becomes despondent and decides to throw himself in the river... his suicide attempt draws the attention of Edouard (Charles Granval), an incurable romantic and an ageing man of ideals who jumps in to save Boudu and takes the homeless man in to try and get him 'back on his feet'. Boudu is uninterested in being 'saved' though, he isn't the grateful houseguest that Eduoard and his wife expect. At first he's angry that he's been saved, then he's tactless, rude and demanding, and asks a lot of impertinent questions. The family tries to transform him into an upstanding citizen by buying him clothes and bathing him, but Boudu remains defiantly hobo-ish every step of the way.

Boudu is a bum in every way, but he's also a man who can surprise us. The audience's expectation is for his initial appearance to be decieving, for him to break free of his shackles of poverty and to prove that people of all walks of life are capable of operating in the higher classes, but Boudu is a bum by choice - which is something else altogether. It eventuates that he's a very unpleasant houseguest, and will take advantage at every opportunity... this is class war, he'll take no prisoners and offer no quarter in the face of all this upper class guilt and nicery because he rejects everything they stand for at a more fundamental level. It's not something that Eduoard and his wife will ever understand, and it also makes for a great unexpected climax (and perhaps the biggest surprise here isn't the choice he makes but the fact that he can swim! Someting that makes his earlier suicide attempt decidedly unsuicidal). Simon is fantastic in the role, his drunken scenes are a little remniscent of Charlie Chaplin's work, and the film's sense of comedy has a timelessness that has more in common with the anti-authoritarian streak of comedy in the silent era. I imagine that if Chaplin's Little Tramp could talk he would've sounded a bit like Boudu.

There are other threads relating to social hypocrisy that run through the film as well, such as the scene where Eduoard jumps in to save Boudu while everyone else just watches. His fellow French admire Eduoard's gallantry and heroism in saving Boudu, but it's only the ideal they admire. All of Eduoard's temporary allies disappear once Boudu is revived, none of them are actually prepared to physically lend a hand. There are so many great moments that arise from Boudu's interaction with those around him, especially as he apes and mocks the habits of the upperclass. He's a man who doesn't care what other people think, a supreme agent of the impulse and an anti-establishment hero who will continue to live on through the power of cinema.

DIRECTOR: Jean Renoir
WRITER/SOURCE: Jean Renoir, based on the play by Rene Fauchois.
KEY ACTORS: Michel Simon, Charles Granval, Marcelle Hainia, Jean Gehret, Max Dalban

RELATED TEXTS:
- Boudu Saved From Drowning, a 1919 play by Rene Fauchois.
- Remade twice, the first time in America as Down and Out in Beverly Hills in 1986, starring Nick Nolte and Richard Dreyfuss, and again in France in 2005 as Boudu, starring Gerard Depardieu.
- The American film spawned a short-lived sitcom, also called Down and Out in Beverly Hills.
- Michel Simon and Jean Renoir worked together on the films The Bitch and On Purge Bebe.
- Jean Renoir most renowned comedy is the film The Rules of the Game.