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Boudu sauvé des eaux (Boudu Saved From Drowning)

Director: Jean Renoir
Year: 1932
Run-time: 1 hr 24 min
Source: Criterion Channel Streaming

Notable For: This is the first film on the list from the great French director Jean Renoir, son of the impressionist painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir.  Boudu is adapted from a play - the titular tramp is a character is a tramp who, after being saved by a bourgeois bookseller, then proceeds to take advantage of his benefactor's kindness by upending all social mores and lustily pursuing his wife and maid (who he was having an affair with). 

Verdict: As a tramp character, Boudu is inevitably compared to Chaplin's iconic character.  However, unlike the purity and innocence that made Chaplin's Tramp so endearing, Boudu as portrayed by Michel Simon is more like Heath Ledger's Joker, taking delight at watching other people squirm at him.  And there are multiple cringeworthy moments, both comically cringeworthy as he gets shoe grease all over the wife's bedroom, and problematically so, as he gets very rapey in a way that should get him arrested.  Ultimately, I think Renoir wants us to have conflicted feelings about the character - he's not a hero of the lower class as I think later portrayals would deem him.  There's a lot to like about the naturalistic style of this film (including the documentary-style approach to many scenes), but it's also not an easy, straightforward watch, and I don't think it was intended to be.
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