Directed by Jean Renoir. Starring Michel Simon, Charles Granval Club, IFI, Dublin, 81 min
BOUDU, a Parisian bum distressed by the death of his dog, takes a suicidal plunge into the Seine, only to be rescued by well-heeled bookseller, Edouard Lestingois.
Moved by the titular rascal’s plight, the Lestingois family decides to take the filthy, cheekily honest tramp into their home. He shows his gratitude by rocking their comfortable middle class existence to its very foundations. The ladies – notably Edouard’s prissy wife and the household maid who doubles as his mistress – had better watch out.
Boudu Saved from Drowningis not Renoir's best; it's hardly up there with The Rules of the Gameor The Grand Illusion. But its runaround charms and sneaky barbs have endured since they first raised eyebrows nearly 80 years ago.
A gentle satire rather than double-barreled attack, the picture pitches a decent if hypocritical bourgeois hero against an unruly entity that's part Freudian id, part Bugs Bunny. What if, the director appears to ask, Charlie Chaplin's Tramp was a real guy who moved into your gaff? Decades later, Paul Thomas Anderson would make similar enquiries about Adam Sandler in Punch Drunk Love.
Renoir's neat comic archetypes have been frequently revisited; the film was remade Down and Out in Beverly Hills, reimagined with Gerard Depardieu, and is recycled and mined by every second anarchic arthouse wow. Boudu may be human, but he shares much DNA with the rat in Sitcom, the lemming in Lemmingand the weasel under the cocktail cabinet.
For all these competing Boudus, nobody has come close to rivaling Michel Simon’s superb central performance. Late in life, Renoir recalled Boudu as a “free exercise around an actor”. Just like us, he was happy to sit back and watch M Simon make mischief.
