Skip to main content

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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

簪 (Ornamental Hairpin)

Director: Hiroshi Shimizu Year: 1941 Run-time: 1 hr 15 min - Like The Masseurs And A Woman , this takes place in a mountain spa, and is centered on the characters' drive for escapism. From hindsight, this would seem to be the director's desire to escape the war - one of the characters is apparently a soldier (who is injured by the titular object and kept from returning), although it's barely mentioned. It probably isn't far to read too much historicity into this film. Like its predecessor, it's a short and light glimpse into a few lives meeting in this setting defined by transience. It's less than 80 minutes, but takes a glacial pace in which our thoughts will naturally wander. That's not a criticism - in a way, it helps us relate to the characters, whose thoughts are also returning to the "real world", no matter how much they may wish otherwise.
Post a Comment
Read more

Fétiche Mascotte (The Mascot)

Director: Ladislas Starevich Year: 1933 Run-time: 26 min Source: Youtube Notable For : The second animated short on the list from 1933 is this stop-motion piece from the Polish-Russian film-maker Ladislas Starevich.  Stop-motion is almost as old as cinema itself (Starevich had been innovating since 1912).  The craft here is as good as any modern film, and Starevich's twisted imagination is on full display, with dolls and household objects coming to life in a dark version of Toy Story.  For animation fans, it almost goes without saying that Starevich was an influence on Jan Svankmajer's work much later. Verdict :  Every frame is a bizarre delight. There didn't seem to be an overarching plan to this work (indeed, it's possible that The Mascot  is an amalgamation of several shorter films featuring the same dog character), and so the film veers from one strange scene to the next, with much of the second half taking place in some kind of tchotchke hell governe...
Post a Comment
Read more

Le Quai des brumes (Port Of Shadows)

Director: Marcel Carné Year: 1938 Run-time: 1 hr 31 min - This is the first of two Carné films on the list from 1938.  We haven't talked much about French poetic realism, the style pioneered by Pepe le Moko  (also starring Jean Gabin), but this is where that style heavily overlaps with what would become film noir (Wikipedia claims this was one of the first films to be called as such).  The tropes of noir are so heavily associated with post-war depression and malaise that it's pretty shocking to see these same tropes show up before the war - the French government agreed, and even banned this film for a time as not representative of the French spirit.  It's an excellent film, though. From my perspective, both of these early Carné works show clear ties to the Marseilles trilogy - this one, because of the persistent theme of the sea as a place for escape and loss of identity. - I am much more in love with the French acting style of the 30's than I am...
Post a Comment
Read more