305 Boudu Saved from Drowning

[BusterK.]

Boudu is one of the best single disc Criterion i own. The transfer is better than MOC's, but the real treat of this edition are the EXTRAS. Kudos to the archivists for bringing such important footage! I'd rather watch the Rohmer-Douchet conversation for the 20th time than go to my next film class. Such articulate thoughts, especially those delivered by Douchet.

Don't you think this edition was somehow overlooked in 2005?

[Subbuteo]

Boudu is one of the best single disc Criterion i own. The transfer is better than MOC's

I think you mean better than the R2 Optimum release. The Criterion was certainly not overlooked by me...one of my favourites that year and one of the best covers ever.

[cdnchris]

I wasn't actually that intrigued by this one when it was first announced and originally skipped it but I picked it up on an impulse when I found it used sometime last year and was quite delighted by the film. Also, it was definitely one of their more solid "lower-tiered" one in terms of extras and such. It was one of the rare releases where I watched the film and then immediately went through all the supplements in one sitting. I usually do it over a course of time. While the conversation was quite good, I have to also admit I got bigger kick out of the interactive map, which was a neat feature (I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff, though, maps and timelines.)

[Le Samouraï]

Saw it just recently and felt the same way. Not exactely Le Bête Humaine, but quite entertaining, well worth the admission price, and the interactive map is definitely a great extra.

[Cinesimilitude]

I never would have traded this film away if it weren't for the fact that I got Notorious for it. From some of the comments in this thread, I think I'll need to see La bete Humaine sometime soon as well.

[Matt]

Saw it just recently and felt the same way. Not exactely Le Bête Humaine, but quite entertaining, well worth the admission price, and the interactive map is definitely a great extra.

Interesting. Boudu is far and away my favorite Renoir (and one of my favorite films, period), but I thought La Bête humaine risibly hokey. It's like Renoir's version of The Hands of Orlac or something. Boudu is magisterial in its shambolic, rough-hewn manner, and its theme of anarchic non-conformity and total repudiation of bourgeois values is, for me, much more powerful than some crazy story about a guy who has murderous epileptic fits (not to mention more universal and true than the Front Populaire claptrap of Monsieur Lange and Les Bas-fonds).

[Max von Mayerling]

I'm with Matt. I also find that Boudu has a kind of documentary feel at times (mostly probably because of the on location shooting), which is pretty exciting, given, in part, that we're talking about early 30's Paris.

I feel like La Bete Humaine needs to be three times longer to really get where I feel like it is going. It feels to me like a very truncated version of itself.

In contrast, Boudu gets where it is going in about 3 minutes and then just goes enjoyably bonkers thereafter...

[ezmbmh]

My first impression seeing Boudu was it was a romp, Simon was amazing, and the documentary feel, as it's been called, or maybe the use of real city shots by Renoir was impressive. But once I looked at the “moralâ€

[HerrSchreck]

not to mention more universal and true than the Front Populaire claptrap of Monsieur Lange.

Ahh.. thank heavens; I thought I was the only one who thought that LANGE was fairy unspectacular and, to be honest, trite and almost rushed. The subject matter and the performers (aside from the great Mazamette) just drag the yawns right out of me and I rarely can finish it. Always nice to see Kirsanoffs wife (though better in Gremillion's La PETITE LISE & Kirsanoff himself) however.

A do like BETE HUMAINE though. Despite it's shiny veneer and polish theres a hell of a lot of skill and beauty there in the filmmaking, and it's a deceptively flat surface. I find a hell of a lot of sincere feeling and subplot growling there just under the surface.. it just requires a little more deliberate empathy with these characters. The film is wrapped up so perfectly and the surface is so tight it's hard to get down into any sense of intended sympathy with any of the characters-- because they're all fucked and shitty in one way or another. And then you look at all of them in the long, sad, view and it hits you like mood on a dark cloudy summer day. And you sympathize with all of them, and the film just opens way way up.

[jbeall]

Just saw this recently, and I love the interactive map. That is a fantastic extra, much more informative and efficient than a commentary track, in my opinion.

Also, there's a French movie from 2003 called Apres Vous that's basically a remake of Boudu--I haven't seen the film, but I came across it the other day while browsing in a dvd store.

[Tommaso]

I hate to confess that I only now managed to see the "Boudu" disc, but would subscribe to everything hitherto said in praise of this film. Here again Renoir's ability not to take sides, not to expose Lestingois as completely ridiculous and simply embracing Boudu's anarchic stance instead, is outstanding. As the highly interesting Rohmer conversation points out, Boudu is both attractive AND dangerous, and although one tends to side with him at the end, I for once asked myself whether I would have put up with that character longer than, say, two hours or so. And there is so much going on in the 'deeper structures' of the film, in the satirizing of 'culture', most of which would have been lost on me without the excellent extras (that map!) CC provides.

Serious irritation was provided by the transfer itself, though: there are several instances where I find that the framing is way too tight, and heads are chopped off more than once in a rather annoying way. It seems unlikely that Renoir made it intentionally so, given his general excellency in framing. Not wanting to appear as nitpicking or subverting the general excellency of this disc, and I may be somewhat on the alert given our recent discussion of "Vampyr", but: could this be again a 1.19 film transferred incorrectly as 1.33? Given it was made in 1931, 1.19 seems only too possible. I saw a rounded upper edge of the frame at the very beginning (which would indicate everything is in order), but this was only during the titles.
And it wouldn't be the first Criterion release where something like this happened. There are similar problems with one of the Rene Clair films (can't remember which one at the moment).

[Matt]

Could a new edition of Boudu be forthcoming?

The lineup for the seventh annual Cannes Classics, a sidebar of the Cannes Film Festival that highlights new restorations of classics and films previously thought lost, has been announced on the festival’s website. The exciting program will present eighteen titles, which include features by such filmmakers as Luis Buñuel (Tristana), Réné Clément (La bataille du rail), Alfred Hitchcock (Psycho), and John Huston (The African Queen) as well as a short by Roberto Rossellini (Il ruscello di Ripasottile). Three films that are part of the Criterion Collection will also be screening: Jean Renoir’s Boudu Saved from Drowning, in a never-before-seen version that includes scenes deleted from the original release; Volker Schlöndorff’s The Tin Drum, in a new director’s cut; and Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard, in a new restoration done in part by Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, Pathé, and the Cineteca di Bologna.

[HerrSchreck]

Does anybody even know what that means? Have we hitherto been subject to an incomplete-vs-the-original-release-version of BOUDU, or are they simply sticking stuff into the already "authoritative" (nee' Original Release) version?

Paging our All Things Renoir Man, Herr Hare!

[jbaart]

well, I just bought Boudu (disc hasn't even arrived yet) so I'll be gutted if a new version appears this year Bad timing I guess but I needed it for a Renoir class at university.

[Tommaso]

Well, if someone indeed unearthed a very old print (perhaps even the neg?) of "Boudu" and that becomes the basis for a new release, chances are high that the aspect ratio will be correct this time. That alone would make the double-dipping worthwhile.

[knives]

Fuck this movie!

Sorry about that. I just found this to be a tiring frustration. It's not funny, it's not dramatic, and it says nothing. Please, please defend this movie because I want to know how anyone could enjoy this crap. I'd be able to put up with the waste of character that Boudu is or the idiocy of everyone else if it had anything to say, but it doesn't. As usual it seems Renoir is trying to say something about class, but the final message is so out of character for Renoir that what I identify can't be it. The only other explanation I can think of though is so naive and stupid that I can't take it seriously. How could anybody, let alone a supposed humanist, make a film so poisonous? It boggles my mind.

[Matt]

Start here.

[knives]

Thar does do a swell job of improving the film, showing that it is the naive option (that isn't so naive) rather than the contradiction. I still have a feeling of dislike, not agreeing entirely with the message nor how it is shown, but I don't hate it either which actually makes me happy.

[tartarlamb]

I am struggling to imagine how someone could watch Michel Simon without laughing. And the more uncomfortable you get with his antics, the more you realize that its not some other righteous middle class foil that's being skewered.

Maybe one's enjoyment of this film correlates directly with however mean-spirited and cynical he or she is.

[knives]

Thinking a bit more I believe my problem lies with the moral conclusion of the film. It seems that Renoir is trying to say that charitable people aren't charitable, which is something I agree with. Where I distinctly fins this to be problematic is, and I will phrase this completely wrong, the idea that should be allowed to be continued a nuisance (I've tried to write this ten times and I said I'd get it wrong so I'm not changing it this time). I think The Last Holiday handled a similar idea far better with its ending.

[Matt]

I don't think Renoir is saying "charitable people aren't charitable." I think he's saying something more like "charity often costs too much to accept, and sometimes too much to give."

[knives]

Yes, that is a far better way to phrase things.

[ellipsis7]

BOUDU coming to UK/IRL BR from Park Circus on April 4th... This will be the new resto which premmed as part of Cannes Classics in 2010 and subsequently went on theatrical release hereabouts....

Boudu saved from Drowning (Boudu Sauved des Eaux) (1932) by Jean Renoir is screened in a print containing a scene that has never been screened before. The film tells the story of the homeless Boudu, saved by an idealistic bookshop owner after trying to commit suicide. Before long he is causing mischief in his benefactor’s household. (Print restored by the Cinémathèque de Bologne)

Further notes on the resto...

The restoration of Boudu sauve des eaux (1932)

The restoration was carried out through the 2K digitalisation of the original nitrate negative image and a "safety" print. The original 1.19 aspect ratio has been re-established; this specific ratio was often used in the early days of talking pictures but was soon abandoned in favour of a more rectangular frame.

The restoration of the soundtrack was based on the best available source, a positive exhibition print, as the original elements - incomplete and chemically damaged - were impossible to use. The original sound negatives of reels 1, 4 and 5 were destroyed by the French Cinematheque in 2002 due to their state of decay.

It is worth noting that a previously missing scene was by chance conserved in the original negative, thus allowing presentation of a more complete version of the film. This is the surprising sequence in which Boudu spits on a book by Balzac (/La Phsiologie du marriage/) then jeers at the portrait of a soldier in uniform. This scene was probably removed following the intervention of the Paris Chief of Police, who summoned Jean Renoir and Michel Simon in order to make them cut certain scenes that could have possibly "disturbed the peace."

However, since the sound negative was incomplete, the scene would have remained silent if sound effects had not been added.

The film's grading was completely revised by Isabelle Julien, renowned for her work in this field (recently on Un conte de Noel, Faubourg 36, Un prophete, Les Herbes folles, Le Concert and the restoration of Play Time and La Dolce Vita).

The work was carried out at the Immagine Ritrovata laboratories in Bologna and at Digimage, Paris.

[jsteffe]

Thanks for posting that press release! I just emailed Jon Mulvaney about the restoration and suggested it as a candidate for Blu-ray on Criterion. I'm sure they're already well aware of the restoration, though.

[Mr Sausage]

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