Film Review
Jean Renoir's follow-up to his Maigret mystery-thriller
La
Nuit du carrefour (1932) approaches the problem of France's
bourgeoisie from a completely different angle, through scurrilous
farce.
Renoir's growing sense of detachment from the bourgeois
world into which he was born is noticeable across his first six sound
films but attains its most vivid expression in
Boudu sauvé des eaux, not
only through the choice of subject, but also through the way in which
the director chooses to film it. Unlike many of his
contemporaries, who had embraced the limiting conventions of
Hollywood-style filmmaking, Renoir sought to develop more imaginative
ways of telling a story, using long takes with camera motion instead of
the more familiar technique of splicing together short static
shots.
Boudu
sauvé des eaux is essentially a film about the conflict
between freedom and convention, so it is particularly appropriate that
Renoir should employ a cinematic style, characterised by its fluidity
and naturalism, that defies the conventions of the time. Renoir's
moving camera and long takes make the spectator aware that he is an
outsider, a voyeur looking in on the privileged but stifled world of
the bourgeoisie from a distance. The use of split focus and
almost telescopic long shots introduces a hint of Brechtian distancing
which heightens the absurdity of what we see, making this an
especially virulent assault on bourgeois etiquette.
The film is based on René Fauchois's very popular play
Boudu sauvé des eaux, which
was first performed in Paris in the mid-1920s. The actor who
played the part of the tramp in the original stage play was Michel
Simon, who later persuaded Renoir to adapt it into a film. Simon
had by this time appeared in three of Renoir's films -
Tire au flanc (1928),
On
purge bébé (1931) and
La
Chienne (1931) - and although Renoir originally had
misgivings about the project he agreed to adapt Fauchois's play, with
Simon putting up most of the finance and taking the lead role.
The film differs from the play in two significant respects - Boudu
replaces Lestingois as the central character and the ending has Boudu
returning to his vagabond ways rather than becoming fully indoctrinated
into the bourgeois milieu. So confident were they that the film
would be a success that Renoir and Simon considered making a series of
films featuring the character Boudu, although this ultimately came to
nothing. Whilst it received generally positive reviews,
Boudu sauvé des eaux also
provoked considerable outrage in some quarters.
The rightwing press was, predictably, scandalised by what was perceived as an
anarchist assault on bourgeois values, and such hostility contributed
to the film's poor performance at the box office. The two things that caused
most offence were Boudu eating with his fingers and spitting into a
first edition of Honoré Balzac's
Physiologie du Mariage (the bedroom
frolics almost passed without comment, which in itself says something
about the bourgeois mindset).
Boudu sauvé des eaux is
arguably Renoir's first true masterpiece, a major step forward from
earlier comedies such as
On purge
bébé, and a foretaste of what was to come.
It was also one of his most innovative films, using real locations,
camera movement and sound in a way that was well ahead of its
time. The sunny location sequences (shot on the Marne near
Joinville on the outskirts of Paris) evoke the impressionistic
aesthetic of the director's father, Pierre-Auguste, and convey his keen
appreciation of the beauty and harmony of the natural world, just as
vividly as his subsequent films
Toni (1935),
Partie de campagne (1936) and
Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe
(1959). The sun-drenched wide open spaces, populated by smiling
carefree people, contrast with the cramped darkened interior of the
Lestingois household, accentuating the sense of culture clash between
Boudu and his benefactor and underlining Renoir's portrayal of the
bourgeoisie as a class imprisoned by their flawed values and their
material needs. It is logical to equate Renoir with the
free-spirited Boudu, although, when you watch the director's films of
this period, you sense that he is making Boudu's journey in reverse -
gradually divesting himself of his bourgeois associations so that he
can be freer, more true to himself and therefore better able to
appreciate the joys and opportunities that life offers. Renoir's
growing antipathy towards the bourgeoisie would be accompanied by an
increasing engagement with left-wing politics, something that would
impinge on his films in the second half of the decade.
Although
Boudu sauvé des eaux
is often described as anti-bourgeois, Renoir's treatment of his
bourgeois characters is actually very sympathetic. Lestingois,
the bookseller who saves Boudu from drowning, may be a hypocrite, a
paternalist and something of a snob, but he is also kind, compassionate
and forgiving. Set against Lestingois's obvious humanism, it is
Boudu who appears unsympathetic, showing nothing but ingratitude to his
saviour and doing everything he can to upset his household. In a
sense, Boudu is as much a prisoner of his milieu as Lestingois
is. His lack of refinement prevents him from appreciating good
things (like a Balzac novel, which he uses as a handkerchief) and he
does not even have the imagination to see how winning the lottery can
change his life for the better. The film may well conclude with
Boudu nonchalantly returning to his former vagabond life, but by this
stage Renoir has made us aware that freedom is illusory - that Boudu is
as pinned to his little groove as Lestingois and his menagerie
are to theirs. Renoir's own sympathies may be more with Boudu than with his
benefactor, but he recognises that no man can ever be free. Boudu
may have the open road and the sun on his back, but Lestingois has
Balzac and Baudelaire, a more than adequate compensation.
A propos, the young poet sitting on the park bench near the start of
the film is none other than Jacques Becker, an assistant director on
the film who would subsequently become of one France's great pre-New
Wave auteur filmmakers.
Boudu
sauvé des eaux has so far been remade twice - as
Down and out in Beverly Hills
(1986) by Paul Mazursky and as
Boudu (2005) by Gérard
Jugnot. Needless to say, neither of these updated versions can
hold a candle to Renoir's magnificent original, which remains one of
the great satirical masterpieces of 1930s French cinema.
© James Travers 2011
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Next Jean Renoir film:
Chotard et Cie (1932)