Excellent, smart action film.

A Major Disappointment

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

Ever since I first saw L'Atalante, Michel Simon has remained one of my all time favorite actors. His ability to play quirky and hilarious characters with a dose of emotional depth is practically unmatched in French cinema history. A lifetime friend with director Jean Renoir, Simon starred in a few of his films, including On purge bébé, La Chienne, and, most famously, Boudu Saved From Drowning.Before I continue gawking at Michel Simon's legendary performance, I would also like to comment on the film's other masterful elements. While the leading performance alone overshadows everything about the movie, every factor of the film is still done to near perfection. As always, Jean Renoir's cinematic eye is breathtaking. He is never afraid to allow his camera to glide in on the action and occasionally shoot everyday events and objects with grand visual splendor. The early sequence in which Boudu plunges into the Seine river, and proceeds to be rescued, is shot with an epic flavor. These shots are beautiful and big to an unexpected extent. The script is also pitch perfect, and the plot is a perfect set up for good comedy, despite its seemingly dark overtones. Somehow, Renoir is able to make the suicidal homeless man's more melancholic moments funny by infusing some strong social satire and occasionally dark comedy in the likable mix. Now, onto Michel Simon's performance!Although he is not a household name, Michel Simon deserves to be hailed as one of cinema's most legendary comedians. In Boudu Saved From a Drowning, he is able to make the way his character eats a comedic highlight. I was nearly rolling on the floor with roaring laughter throughout my rewatching of Boudu simply because of how unbelievably funny this performance is. Even before the punchline, Simon has you giggling, often with intense anticipation. Simon is able to make his character all the more unpredictable and goofy with even the most subtle movements and facial expressions. Michel Simon is simply a natural at producing genuine laughter, and I love him with all of my heart for it!

Jean Renoir is a filmmaker who is very well renowned for his humanism, for his acceptance of all sorts of people and all sorts of cultures and schools of thoughts. Having said that, 'Boudu Saved from Drowning' is a very sharp attempt at social commentary without much restraint. He explores the distinctions between the lower classes and the bourgeois class by making them clash. Although he doesn't make bad/evil people out of either of these two sections of people, he doesn't shy away from showcasing the underlying hypocrisy that was a part of the bourgeois class in France at the time and he also underlines the wild and unsophisticated disrespect and disregard for others that can be shown by people belonging to the lower classes.Renoir wrote the screenplay for the film based on a play René Fauchois. The film starts with Edouard, the bourgeois bookshop owner as Priapus pursuing Anne-Marie who is supposed to be Chloe. This fantasy sequence takes place on a lateral stage with no doors separating the two. Suddenly the shot dissolves and we are transported to the interior of Edouard's bookshop/apartment, but he is still calling Anne-Marie his little nymph and he is referring to himself as Priapus. This means that in his mind's imaginations, Edouard wants his relationship with Anne-Marie to be like the one shown in the opening shot. But then he asks Anne-Marie to ready the soup and we see them separate and carry on their respective duties. Renoir carefully draws out how separated they are in the apartment due to their social roles. One of the many important reasons why the design of the apartment is important is because Renoir shoots it in a way to underline the way people are separated. This apartment is a metaphor for bourgeois society. The whole apartment is littered with numerous doors that separate the people living inside. Renoir uses deep focus filming to not only allow the actors to live the environment but also to underline the geometry of the apartment. There is a marvellous scene in which the camera accompanies Anne- Marie from the dining room through a series doors and windows with one tracking shot until she arrives at the kitchen at then comes forward to the window which offers the frame within a frame visual appeal. This fantastic shot allows Renoir to brilliantly show the barriers of this apartment. These rooms and corridors are enclosed and isolated and suffocating and in a thematic way restrictive. This is a subtle, wordless, visual, but still a scathing attack on the bourgeois culture.The suffocating and enclosed nature of Edouard Lestingois' apartment is contrasted by the outdoor and open locations where we first find Boudu. The pillars in the apartment are replaced by the vertical rows of trees. Renoir uses the water body as the place of meeting and separation between the two classes. But once Boudu enters the apartment of Lestingois and hence the bourgeois culture, the hypocrisies that are inherent to this culture get gradually revealed.The film is pretty impressive in my opinion with one reservation. There is a scene where one character forces himself on another and the way that scene gets executed is a bit objectionable especially today. That particular scene is immensely dated and doesn't work at this day and age. The lighthearted way in which this scene gets brushed aside is a bit offensive.Apart from a singular reservation, I think 'Boudu Saved from Drowning' is a solid film in the filmography of the French master Jean Renoir who went on to make even better and more critically acclaimed films. This film had a huge influence on the French New Wave directors in the aspect of shooting on actual locations. This particular film can also be seen as a prototype for subsequent films dealing with similar plots about 'uncivilised' individuals being introduced to 'civilised' society like Truffaut's 'The Wild Child' or Herzog's 'The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser'. Recommended.

I suppose this is a funny movie, if your idea of funny is someone behaving in an atrocious manner, while those around him keep letting him get away with it. The title character is saved from drowning (attempted suicide), and he is taken into the home of the bookseller who saved him. He then proceeds to deliberately wreck everything he comes into contact with, while exhibiting disgusting mannerisms. Thirty minutes into the film, you'll wish the bookseller had let him drown. Forty minutes in, and you'll be ready to hold his head under the water until he quits struggling.The bookseller's wife is a sourpuss, so Boudu rapes her and puts a smile on her face. I felt like a sourpuss watching this movie, and I felt violated by it. But unlike the wife, I did not smile.

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.