Boudu, Saved from Drowning deserves its classic status
I always forget how aggressive Renoir can be with his satire. I was troubled by the problem-solving violence of Carne's Port of Shadows (still an excellent film!), so I couldn't help but smile a little bit when I read that Renoir was telling people it justified fascism- a man so hardcore in his humanism he wages his own kind of war with the other side. The "other side" is a long shore that encompasses cynicism, hopelessness, and all kinds of chauvinism.
If you want to see a film about people who are insipid, lustful, self-centered, and bigoted that still manages to affirm the spirit of mankind and ultimate beauty of the world Boudu, Saved from Drowning is just the thing. The print they showed at the MOMA was badly damaged, but the story pulled me in so much I quickly got used to it. The wall-to-wall comedy includes slapstick, mismatched sex pairings, and a wonderfully out-there performance by Michel Simon as a retarded drifter. Sex (including an affair and a gray rape) is dealt with pretty frankly, and there is a certain ominousness that lurks behind the joyful farce the film has become by its conclusion.
A Day in the Country minor and great
This pretty, nostalgic 40-minute film was cobbled together from fragments of an unfinished project Renoir shot in 1936. A Parisian bourgeois middle-aged couple take their daughter and her fiance on a trip to "the country" where two young fishermen jocularly conspire to "make love" to the mother and daughter. They manage to distract the men with fishing poles and row the ladies down the river in little boats. The Hemingway lookalike who courts the daughter gets her in some bushes and pounces - she resists strongly but once he has his lips on hers, her mind seems to have changed. A similar scene occurs in Boudu, and the coincidence certainly raised my eyebrow. We fade back on the couple lying together, the girl upset and the man uncomfortable. A very brief scene tacked on at the end shows her return years later with her husband. The one-time lovers re encounter each other and proclaim their everlasting love, then she reluctantly leaves again and the film ends abruptly. Lightly-scathing satire on the clueless city folk and a gruff cameo from the director add to the joy created by the images: gorgeous shots of natural scenery fill out the bare narrative, and there are some particularly fine examples of Renoir's noted affection for the movement of water- inherited from his father, perhaps?
While in no way a masterpiece, its beauty and conciseness have me rate it just a little higher than "worth seeing".
No comments:
Post a Comment