Tag Archives: De Sica

Boudu sauvé des eaux [1932)

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

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Madame de… [1953)

The last romantic.

Staggering into the 20th century.

We would like to think it was Brahms, but no…1897.

It is perhaps more like Rachmaninov.

You will get the better recordings with that spelling.

Deutsche Grammophon.

Staggering into the 20th century with a morose remembrance.

Born in 1873.  Died in 1943.

How disorienting.

To be 41 when WWI started.

We don’t know with which powers we are fooling.

And so the only way to watch Max Ophüls’ masterpiece Madame de… is to imagine.

It takes imagination to be unhappy.

The great generals are actually incapable of unhappiness.

Up early every morning.

Drinking raw eggs.

Running 10 miles.

And so the last romantic in this film is none other than the Italian director (but here an actor) Vittorio De Sica.

And the cynic who melts is Danielle Darrieux.

I will say quite plainly, sometimes boring films are the best.

It is counterintuitive, but I will provide one theory as to their efficacy.

The boring film takes a long time to “play out”.

It is an older style of filmmaking–an older style of storytelling.

They say Frederick the Great didn’t think much of Shakespeare.

In some ways I don’t blame him.

Freddie.

But don’t get me wrong:  much art of the past lacks the pizzazz we are used to as humans in the 21st century.

And so if you give this film a chance, you might just wind up as a resurrected being.

I’m being awfully cryptic.  As always.

I don’t want to spoil it.

This is merely a letter from the heart.  Tear it up and let it snow in the breeze.

Little pieces of paper from the train window.

Letter never sent.  R.E.M.

 

-PD

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