When I watch a film like this, I am emptied of all emotion.
The movie has taken all of my most precious feelings and set them on fire.
Catharsis.
I am exhausted.
Because I sat down to watch…thinking it would be just another film.
Thinking that nothing could equal that special specialness–that humane humanity of Chaplin’s Limelight.
And then I am blindsided. Coldcocked.
When will I stop underestimating Jean Renoir?
He is truly the Beethoven of French film…the père fondateur.
Sure, there were the Lumière brothers…and Georges Méliès.
We can add Abel Gance.
But it was in the personage of Jean Renoir that French cinema really coalesced.
I would say Monsieur Renoir made at least four perfect films:
La Règle du jeu,
La Grande illusion,
The Golden Coach,
and finally (or rather, first of all) Boudu sauvé des eaux.
In some ways, Boudu is the funniest film I have ever seen (thanks to the immortal Michel Simon).
In some ways, this is the strangest film I’ve ever seen.
But the overall mélange is a sublime mixture of expression which I have never seen equaled elsewhere.
1932.
Films had barely begun to talk. 1928.
And so Renoir, like Hitchcock in England, was in on the ground floor.
He was there at the beginning (more or less).
And his genius would endure over the decades.
Yet none of his films have the inimitable joy of Boudu.
It is strange.
Boudu the savant.
Boudu the idiot.
Boudu the wild man.
1932.
What shocking originality!
We all have things which make our lives worth living.
There are tears in things…this inscrutable phrase of Virgil.
…sunt lacrimae rerum.
The subjectivity of things feeling our sorrow.
The objectivity of the things we have endured.
Tears in things…tears of things…tears for things.
When Boudu’s dog runs away. Yes, I felt Ménilmontant for a moment…Dimitri Kirsanoff.
But I now realize that I also felt Umberto D. De Sica.
The dog.
The end of life.
The simple pleasure.
The immense sadness.
We all have things which make our lives worth living.
For me, it is the cinema. And in the cinema of my heart, France comes first.
-PD
paulydeathwish 
Good one my friend I did not see that one yet i have to put this on my list. Nice review.
Thank you 🙂 yes, Michel Simon is hilarious in this. Almost like John Belushi is some weird way. –Paul
Wow, Paul, just reading your reviews, makes me appreciate film/cinema so much more! Thanks for all your passion for this art form and for sharing it here. 🙂
Thank you my friend 🙂 –Paul
Great line: “We all have things which make our lives worth living.”
“Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.” Joseph Addison