Watch Boudu Saved from Drowning For Free

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

You won't be disappointed!

the audience applauded

Excellent adaptation.

This movie by Jean Renoir is a variation on the theme of the 'noble savage', here in the shoes of a tramp played superbly by a young Michel Simon. The 'noble savage' is obviously totally unsuited for bourgeois life and certainly for monogamy. His sexual drive is not yet 'tamed'. He is only comfortable in the open nature with his comrades, the animals, even if he survives merely through 'donations' by the bourgeois. The 'noble savage' is also a 'good male', a theme dear to Jean Renoir. He treated it wonderfully in his short film 'A Day in the Country' based on the story by Guy de Maupassant. The movie is also an admirable evocation of the atmosphere of a city (Paris) and its crowds in the years before 1940 in Europe. Masterfully directed (perfectly natural acting by its cast) this movie is a masterpiece of real French cinema.

Boudu Saved From Drowning offers a remarkably even-handed look at class relations. While some characters, such as a group of policeman unwilling to help a bum search for his missing dog but all too willing to jump to the aid of a lovely woman missing a more materially valuable animal, obviously behave negatively, others have good points to match their bad. In fact, sometimes the characters from different social classes are almost too similar. The film centers around Lestingois, a generous member of the middle class who is most happy when avoiding his stuffy wife to hang around with his saucy maid. Lestingois risks his life to rescue Boudu, an uncultured bum who loses his desire to continue living once he is parted from his only companion. Oddly enough, Lestingois has also lost one of his closest companions as the film begins, yet he hardly seems to care about his missing friend at all. By contrast, Boudu, a man that generally cares little about those around him, is deeply disturbed by his own loss. Still, once Boudu's actions reveal that he's happiest when avoiding Lestingois' wife to woo the maid, it becomes clear that the two aren't so different after all, manners notwithstanding. The culture clash in Boudu Saved From Drowning is good for a few moments of genuine comedy, though they mostly are provided by situational irony, the same inferior type of humor that gave rise to the "sit-com." As a result, the film isn't quite as funny as it might have been. Renoir is more than capable of handling the technical aspects here, though his direction is a bit more restrained than it had been in his previous two pictures. Since I prize the innovative techniques on display in his rawer efforts more highly than the staid professionalism he exhibits here, this was a slight problem for me. I suppose there is much to appreciate in Renoir's carefully composed shots, yet I couldn't help but feel that a refusal to innovate is equivalent to taking the easy way out for a director of Renoir's talents. Nevertheless, Boudu Saved From Drowning is a well made film full of clever social commentary and as such is worthwhile viewing for anyone.

Everybody seems to be sleeping around in a Renoir film. 'Boudu Saved From Drowning (1932)' features Charles Granval as Monsieur Lestingois, an upright middle-class gentleman who generously devotes himself to helping others... but who is also sleeping with the maid. Lestingois saves the life of Boudu (Michel Simon), a wandering tramp who jumps into the Seine, and offers the man shelter in his home. Boudu is vulgar and messy, but his benefactor selflessly persists, even though his ungrateful guest spends most of his time making sleazy advances towards the maid and forcibly seducing Mrs Lestingois. Renoir's comedic cynicism is in full swing here. The previous year had seen Chaplin release 'City Lights (1931),' his penultimate outing as the Little Tramp, and Boudu is certainly intended to be the polar opposite of Chaplin's kindly, lovelorn vagrant. A late twist of fortune (reminiscent of the tacked-on studio ending to Murnau's 'The Last Laugh (1923)') is amusingly abandoned in the final moments, as Boudu shuns the opulence of middle-class life for the unpretentious simplicity of the road. Renoir's camera, accompanied by the merry strains of the Blue Danube waltz, contemplatively regards Boudu's discarded top hat as it drifts downstream – just like its former owner, happy to drift towards an unknown fate.

Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932) ** 1/2 (out of 4) A wealthy man saves a homeless guy from drowning and then takes him into his home where the bum soon starts to seduce his wife and mistress. As Jim stated earlier I too prefer the remake Down and Out in Beverly Hills. I think the biggest problem with this film is that the homeless guy is such a jerk it's hard to really care about him and he does the dumbest things that just seem so over the top that I couldn't laugh at him either. Halfway through the movie I was wishing the rich guy had let him drown so that the movie would have already been over.