Actually it's hard to overpraise any of Jean Renoir's movies. They all have, but this one particularly, a wonderful openness, and thereby freedom for characters to make fresh choices. Propped in a door frame, cleaning his shoes, whatever Boudu does seems unplanned, Renoir saying "Why not?" to anything Michel Simon invented in the liberty of his hair and costumes. Freer maybe than the more carefully scripted inventions of Chaplin and Keaton; right up there with Jean Vigo's "Zero de conduite." Renoir could do crowds; he could do both boating on a stream and a country wedding. He could do human beings, which gives us humanity. Art needs this bouduisme, and long may Boudu live, preferably on a good DVD.
Review of Boudu Saved from Drowning
