Boudu Saved From Drowning

Despite the problems of sound recording in 1932, Jean Renoir (the son of the great Impressionist painter) went out of the studio and shot this film on the streets of Paris and along the banks of the Seine. It is not only a lovely fable about a bourgeois attempt to reform a rebellious bum (Michel Simon is the shaggy, bearded tramp who spills wine on the table and wipes his shoes on the bedspread), but a photographic record of an earlier France. “A beautifully rhythmed film that makes one nostalgic for when it was made.” — Penelope Gilliatt (1932, 87 min, in French w/English subtitles)