Writer-Director Paul Mazursky Dead at 84

By Steve Evans

Five-time Oscar nominee Paul Mazursky, who played a role in Stanley Kubrick's first film, Fear and Desire, died June 30 in Los Angeles. He was 84.

Mazursky's career as an actor, writer, director and producer spanned six decades and almost all genres, although his focus remained primarily on comedy and drama. Always a bridesmaid, he came closest to winning the Academy Award for his work on An Unmarried Woman (1978), starring Jill Clayburgh as a wealthy Manhattanite whose life is shattered when her husband leaves her for a younger woman. Mazursky was up for the Oscar that year as writer, director and producer. Clayburgh also received a nod for Best Actress.

His most popular film, Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), is a remake of Jean Renoir's classic French satire Boudu Saved From Drowning. Mazursky was reportedly a great admirer of French cinema, Renoir in particular, and this fact alone drew me to Mazurksy's work through the years. Down and Out remains one of my favorite films satirizing the Reagan years.

As an actor, Mazursky played a delinquent tormenting Glenn Ford's high school teacher in the hugely influential Blackboard Jungle (1955). Late in life, he had a recurring role as the poker dealer Sunshine in The Sopranos.

As a writer, Mazursky penned the amusing hippie film I love You Alice B. Toklas (1968) starring Peter Sellers as a square who learns to tune in, turn on, drop out and loosen up with the benefit of a special hash-brownie recipe. Getting it on with Leigh Taylor-Young certainly adds to Sellers' enthusiasm for the role.

A Jewish kid from Brooklyn, Mazursky's work was often compared with Woody Allen, as the two worked similar turf. Mazursky never came completely out of Allen's shadow, but they collaborated through the years and Mazursky's films never failed to entertain.

Film critic Roger Ebert wrote that Mazursky's comedies "are more intelligent than most of the serious films around."

Always a writer of topical material, much of Mazursky's output may now seem dated as his settings are invariably linked to the social concerns of a specific time and place. You should seek them out, anyway.

He had an acerbic wit that reportedly emerged from a gentle spirit and a fascination with the foibles of average Americans.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2014 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Zagat's got nuthin' on Steve's Top 20

By Steve Evans

Zagat is known for ranking restaurants, but recently got into the film-ranking bidness by releasing a top 20 list of rather predictable titles. The Godfather and its sequel, Part II, topped the Zagat list. Yawn.

These sorts of things are calculated to create buzz for Zagat out of nothing by sparking conversation and perhaps even controversy through the release of an arbitrary list built around a handful of opinions. Since theirs are no better than yours or mine, I'll let you in on a secret...pssst: wanna know the real top 20 films of all time? Ol’ Cinematic Cteve will tell you…

20. John Houston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. Houston directed his dad Walter to an Oscar and gave Humphrey Bogart one of his best roles as the paranoid prospector Fred C. Dobbs, whose lust for gold elevates the plot beyond a mere western thriller with elements of noir. Greed, loyalty, madness and redemption are themes Houston explores in this dark window into the soul.

19. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Still an effective shocker half a century later, even when you realize what’s coming, as almost anyone past a certain age already knows. Pure filmmaking from a master. The ultimate in audience manipulation, as Hitch shifts our loyalties from one character to the next until we are spinning in a vortex toward the shocking reveal. Film critics fell over themselves studying this little tale of a boy and his mother.

18 Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient. Doomed love is still love – and better than no love at all in this film of contrasting stories set before and in the waning days of World War II. Exquisitely photographed with finely-detailed performances all around, this multiple Oscar-winning tale of love and regret features career-defining work from actors Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche, who won an Oscar, with able support from Kristen Scott Thomas and Willem Dafoe. No matter how many times you see it, The English Patient will make you sob helplessly as the poor choices of these doomed characters lead inexorably to an inevitable conclusion.

17. Francois Truffaut’s Jules and Jim. If a Ménage à trios by definition must ultimately be doomed, the protagonists of Jules and Jim are damned as well. Luminous Jeanne Moreau serves as the troubled object of the title characters’ affections, although neither man ever really understands her appeal to their collective and everlasting regret. Jules and Jim is the archetype of the French nouvelle vague and one of the great classics of the second half of the 20th century.

16. Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. A brilliant, chaotic, hallucinatory depiction of war and madness, each linked inextricably to the other. Coppola pushed his vision to the edge and almost fell over into the abyss as chronicled in the great documentary Hearts of Darkness, about the making of this film. This picture could serve as the textbook for a course on cinematography. Stunning set pieces, such as the unforgettable helicopter raid set to Wagner and Robert Duvall’s immortal speech about napalm.

15. Carol Reed’s The Third Man. “I remember old Vienna….” So begins this post-WW II noir as a low-rent writer of pulp Western novels arrives in Austria to meet a friend who, as it happens, is already dead. The novelist is always one step behind the weary cynics in devastated Vienna as he tries to solve the riddle of Harry Lime and his mysterious associates. Seldom have so many evil characters been portrayed with such disarming charm.

14. Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. A finely-oiled machine built exclusively to terrorize, this film owes more to the Oscar-winning editing than anything a then-27-year-old Spielberg brought to the table in his sophomore directing effort.

13. Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin. The Bolshevik Revolution altered the course of 20th century history. Potemkin changed the course of world cinema. While Team America spoofed the cliché of montage, Eisenstein showed how it was done and how this editing technique could be used for maximum effect.

12. Jean Renoir’s Rules of the Game. The son of an Impressionist painter provoked outrage among the French bourgeois with the release of this fascinating look at class and society. Ambitious in scope, yet intimate in execution, this is a quietly devastating social commentary as relevant today as it was on release in 1939.

11. Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. The picture that introduced Americans to the notion of art-house cinema is practically redolent with symbolic imagery. Max von Sydow famously plays a game of chess with Death, but oh, there’s so much more.

10. Henri Clouzot’s The Wages of Fear. This sordid tale of four desperate men transporting nitroglycerin through the South American jungle may be the most suspenseful film ever made. It’s also one of the mostly sharply drawn portraits of the toll taken by American Imperialism on people who have no choice but to deal with the (lousy) hand of cards they are dealt.

9. Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man! This supremely surreal allegory follows the rise, fall and redemption of one Mick Travis, coffee salesman (Malcolm McDowell), as he wrestles with greed, avarice and ambition. With the radiant Helen Mirren and keyboardist Alan Price, whose songs serve as a sort of Greek Chorus, commenting on the strange meanderings of the plot in this fantastic film.

8. Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi. The title is a Hopi Indian word meaning “life out of balance.” The picture is a highly stylized exploration of beautiful landscapes juxtaposed against the horrors of an urban existence. This provocative, mind-expanding and deeply disturbing film is perhaps more relevant today than it was on its release in 1983. Features the ultimate use of music by minimalist composer Philip Glass.

7. Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter. Three friends go to Vietnam out of a sense of misplaced patriotic duty that lingers even after two of them return. Cimino paints a rich, vivid portrait of working-class life and simple American values, where no one questions government policy and the query of “why?” is always answered with “because.” Stunning. Heartbreaking. Unforgettable. The scene in the POW camp may deliver the 15 most unbearably tense minutes yet committed to film.

6. Charlie Chaplin’s City Lights. A masterpiece of pantomime and poignancy, with a heart-rending final scene. The Little Tramp contemplates economic struggle and saves a blind girl. Dare you not to cry.

5. Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. One of the greatest of all action films, all the more so because it is driven by character first and mayhem second. We care about what happens to these warriors and the villagers they are paid to protect. Get the Criterion edition.

4. Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull. De Niro’s greatest performance. A mesmerizing and tragic character study of a life twisted inside-out and left hollow by sadomasochism. It’s also a boxing picture for people who hate movies about boxing.

3. Milos Foreman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Individuality and iconoclasm clash with bureaucratic authority in this deceptively simple morality play set inside an Oregon asylum for the insane. As the unyielding Nurse Ratched, Louise Fletcher creates one of the most vile and ultimately dangerous characters in cinema history.

2. Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange. Greatest cinematic satire of all time. This film will tell you everything you need to know about political power, class struggles and the disingenuous maneuverings behind government policy, with a spot-on examination of the human condition. “I’m singin’ in the rain….”

And the greatest film of all?

Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. One of the most purely enjoyable pictures ever made, this is a movie constructed like magic on a foundation of nothing. The plot collapses under close scrutiny, but why would you bother? It’s all such glorious fun. Cary Grant plays Cary Grant. James Mason embodies suave villainy. Eva Marie Saint is the woman they both want. Classic set pieces include the crop-dusting biplane chase and the desperate climb acrosss the faces of Mt. Rushmore to a literal cliff-hanger climax. The picture contains everything a movie lover could ask of the cinema, with the greatest double-entendre closing shot in the entire Hitchcock oeuvre.

Cinema Uprising copyright (c) 2010 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

The River: Renoir's Pre-Bollywood Masterpiece

By Steve Evans
“The river runs, the round world spins. Dawn and lamplight, midnight, noon. Sun follows day; night, stars and moon.” ~ From the closing narration.

Master director Jean Renoir shot The River (1951), his first color film, on location in India. It is a gentle coming-of-age tale set during the waning years of the British Raj. Criterion presents a meticulous restoration of this glorious Technicolor film in a flawless digital transfer with an elegant package of extra features befitting a classic. The results are sublime.

And now for a bit of plot…
Le Fleuve (The River) unfolds through the eyes of Harriet (Patricia Walters), a quiet but wildly imaginative English teenager living with her family in the 1920s near the lush, green banks of the holy Bengal River. Like the river itself, the film flows at a leisurely pace as Harriet spends her days composing poetry and observing exotic Indian life over the garden wall surrounding the family home. She follows the daily rituals of the fishermen and workers at the jute factory managed by her father. Harriet enjoys happy afternoons with her friend Valerie (Adrienne Corri, below, right, now best remembered as the hapless wife of writer Mr. Alexander in A Clockwork Orange, a role she would play 20 years later). The girls indulge in make-believe, in the fanciful world of adolescence, narrated with poetic grace by a grown Harriet (voiceover by June Hillman) recalling her distant childhood. Harriet's older friend Melanie, just returned from school, wants to follow the cultural heritage of her late mother, an Indian who married a British colonial. Gentle housekeeper Nan watches over the girls, dispensing wisdom and superstition in equal measure while insects buzz over the flowers, workers chant on their way home from the factory, and the river flows as it has for centuries.

Into this idyll comes Captain John (Thomas E. Breen) a crippled veteran of an unspecified conflict (presumably World War I), who has rejected civilian life for the reflective culture of India. John comes to live with his widower cousin (Melanie's father) who lives near Harriet's family along the river. Smitten with this handsome, brooding soldier, Harriet delivers an invitation to celebrate Diwali, the Hindu Festival of Lights, as a ruse to meet him. The retired captain’s quiet charm and brittle vulnerability strike a fanciful chord in the girls' young hearts. Soon Harriet, Valerie, and Melanie are competing for his affections and grappling with their first pangs of love.

With this deceptively simple tableau Renoir offers a compelling look at postcolonial India. Going deeper, he portrays the inevitable conflicts of social classes and, above all, the ineluctable cycle of the human condition—birth, life, love, death—set against the paradox of an ever-flowing river, seen here as both symbol of stability and metaphor for constant change.

Historical significance and context
A lyrical adaptation of Rumer Godden’s autobiographical novel, The River is a visual tour de force, deeply affecting and timeless in its multilayered charms. Renoir co-wrote the screenplay with Godden, whose own childhood growing up in India is recounted in a 1995 documentary produced for the BBC, included on this disc.

One of the great measures of the film’s success is Renoir’s dignified treatment of the native Indians, his insistence on authenticity, and his respect for Hindu tradition. The film pays reverential deference to the god Kali, whose eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth is mirrored in the narrative structure of the script, which is concerned with timeless themes of childhood, love, and death.

Prior to the production, Renoir said he wanted to make a film about India that featured neither tigers nor elephants. Renoir was weary of Hollywood’s stereotypical treatment of Indian culture in such admittedly classic adventure films as Gunga Din and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer. Renoir was going for something different. So he was, perhaps, unsurprised when Hollywood, where he began working in the 1940s, rebuffed the project and refused funding. After turning to independent financial sources, Renoir still failed to sign a major star to anchor the project, as no one was available who could commit to half a year of location work in India. So he began shooting with a cast of unknowns and amateurs, which resulted quite unexpectedly in tight sequences and rapid cutting rhythms. Renoir was a director accustomed to the fluidity of sustained shots and elaborate camera movements. Yet his approach to The River diverged by necessity from his usual working style. Although he was notoriously temperamental, Renoir’s genius still allowed him a degree of flexibility. So with expensive Technicolor film flying through the cameras and inexperienced performers in front of them, Renoir opted for short takes and a mostly stationary camera. One unforeseen consequence of this approach was the relative ease of shooting repeat takes (novice performers would tend to need multiple takes). The result is a masterpiece unlike anything Renoir had done before. Here, the unexpected alchemy of circumstance, material, and personnel imposed adaptation and improvisation on the creative process, forcing the master director to think in different directions. When the artist is challenged, often enough the result is challenging art.

Renoir's unerring eye for image and composition comes with a pedigree. The son of Impressionist painter Auguste Renoir, he started directing films during the silent era, occasionally financing his projects by selling off the works of his father, who died in 1919 (Auguste Renoir's The Blue River, above, left). Today Renoir's films are routinely listed among the greatest of all time, chief among them Les Règles du Jeu (Rules of the Game), a masterpiece of social satire that ridicules the French aristocracy on the eve of World War II. Even his lesser films are small miracles of the cinema, such as Boudu Sauvé des Eaux (Boudu Saved from Drowning, remade half a century later as Down and Out in Beverly Hills by Renoir devotee Paul Mazursky).

But The River represents a culmination of the themes that preoccupied the great French director throughout his cinematic career—class struggles, social inequities, and an abiding desire for a serene life. In the liner notes accompanying this superb disc, Renoir claims to have found his own inner peace while making the film under challenging conditions. Compounding the difficulties of a location shoot in the Orient with his premiere use of the Technicolor process and a cast of mostly amateurs, The River was also Renoir’s first film in English.

Renoir's nephew Claude produced the luminous Technicolor cinematography. Claude Renoir would go on to frame John Frankenheimer's The French Connection II and the James Bond adventure The Spy Who Loved Me, but in a 45-year career his work on The River remains unequaled. Here is a film that overwhelms the eyes.

The River is also notable for launching the career of director Satyajit Ray, who was Renoir's assistant on the picture. Now renowned as one of the great auteurs of 20th century cinema, Ray discovered a love of film after meeting Renoir and viewing the Italian classic Bicycle Thieves during a trip to London. Instrumental in the Bollywood movement that elevated India to prominence in world cinema, Ray directed 37 films and received an honorary Academy Award shortly before his death in 1992.

At the risk of tripping into babbling sycophancy, we may need to conjure up some unique superlatives to do justice both to The River and Criterion's expert restoration. Here, as with most of the films in its collection, Criterion continues to amaze. With the participation of the film's editor, George Gale, Criterion utilized a digital restoration system to remove thousands of scratches and particles of dirt and debris from the source materials before undertaking a high-definition transfer of the restored 35mm interpositive print. The film probably hasn’t looked this good since its original theatrical run. Criterion notes that the audio was re-mastered at 24 bits, using digital tools to reduce sound defects. The Dolby 1.0 mono directs almost exclusively to the center speaker when deploying 5.1 sound, although a broader soundstage is evident with two-channel playback, which Criterion recommends. There is real aesthetic pleasure to be had from watching this disc, reviewing the supplemental materials, and reading the accompanying 16-page color booklet filled with detailed liner notes and beautiful images from the film. Truly, this is a first-class presentation from Criterion, a name now synonymous with the absolute reference standard in DVD product.

Extras include a 2004 video interview with Martin Scorsese, who was instrumental in pushing forward the restoration effort through his work with the Film Foundation. Scorsese recalls the impact the film had on him as a nine-year-old boy. He also explores in some detail the techniques Renoir deployed in his quest for authenticity. As always, listening to Scorsese discuss a great film is a pleasure in itself. The video introduction by Renoir affords a rare glimpse of the director, relaxed and speaking with apparent candor about the film and how he came to make it. The footage suggests that Renoir was indeed transformed by his experiences on this project.

This lesser-known classic ranks on the short list of cinematic standards that bloom like a perennial, revealing new wonders with every viewing. The cineastes at Criterion deserve a standing ovation for their enduring commitment to quality backed up by the best DVD product in the business.

Coda
The River flows forever — constant, perpetual, yet ever-changing. To those who immerse themselves in these waters, Renoir’s stirring love letter to India delivers as great a gift as a cinephile could hope to receive from an artist.

Copyright © 2009 by Steve Evans // dba Cinema Uprising. All rights reserved.

La Bête Humaine: The Criterion Collection

By Steve Evans

The pitch:

A tale of a murderous ménage à trois, infused with rich symbolism and social commentary by the undisputed master of early French cinema.

Director Jean Renoir veers from his humanist work to deliver a blueprint for what would become known as film noir a decade later. A virtual template for the psychological thriller, Alfred Hitchcock almost certainly studied this intense 1938 film that was years ahead of its time. Contemporary directors should do likewise for lessons in pure craftsmanship and suspense. La Bête Humaine (The Human Beast) was a one-off statement from the French director, who would never make another film as brutally powerful, yet so quietly devastating as this one. With Criterion's expert presentation, the picture remains a rich viewing experience 70 years later, as Renoir explores fatalism and innate human savagery, brought on by co-dependence, mental instability and the heartbreaking betrayal of infidelity. Though a lesser film in the Renoir canon (Rules of the Game remains the acknowledged masterpiece), this is merely by a matter of degrees. La Bête Humaine is based on an 1890 novel (cover art, upper right) by romanticist Émile Zola.

And now for a bit of plot…
Train engineer Jacques Lantier (Jean Gabin, Grand Illusion) drives his beloved locomotive Lison from Paris to La Havre, where he rests for a few days when an axle overheats and must be replaced. A brooding man, Lantier is plagued by occasional and violent seizures, which he blames on the excessive drinking of his forefathers “who poisoned my blood,” as he confides to a friend. Lantier only seems truly alive when driving his locomotive. Donning goggles, he sticks his head out from behind the engineer's seat through the open window where he inspects the tracks, reveling in the sensation of pure speed as the wind whips over his face. His relationship with Lison borders on sexual, and seemingly soothes his temperament.

The La Havre stationmaster, Roubaud (Fernand Ledoux, Les Misérables), and his pretty wife, Séverine (Simone Simon, The Devil and Daniel Webster) like to socialize with the tight railroad community, though Séverine is by far the more popular of the two. The lady is a tramp. The older Roubaud harbors vague suspicions of his young wife's various infidelities, although his pathological possessiveness may be the very reason she seeks comfort in the arms of other men.

When Lantier becomes witness to a murder, Séverine buys the engineer's silence with an invitation to her bed. But her husband always seems to be lurking nearby, skulking in the shadows of the railyard. Lantier fancies he's in love, but any normal man in possession of his faculties would turn from the sweetly poisonous Séverine and run. As the three points of this triangle begin to turn on one another, Séverine wonders if another murder may be the price of freedom.

Historical Significance & Context
Jean Renoir worked in almost every film genre and even invented a few, including the social satire (starting with Boudu Saved From Drowning). Here, he creates a classic noir years before French critics even came up with the label “films noir” — the dark, nihilistic, cynical cinema that American studios began churning out in the 1940s on thin budgets. Here, he assembled a superb cast of absolutely authentic-looking character actors. Renoir also reunited with Gabin on this picture after their collaboration a year earlier on Grand Illusion.

A superstar in his native France, Gabin was only 34 when he made La Bête Humaine. And yet, he appears much older—conveying the weariness of a man so confused and disappointed by life that he could be easily entranced by the seductive charms of a duplicitous woman.

Simone Simon, the quintessential French femme fatale, would later appear in the most famous of RKO Producer Val Lewton's effective low-budget chillers, Cat People and its sequel, Curse of the Cat People. She died of natural causes in Paris in 2005. Simon was 94. (Gabin, Simon, above.)

Renoir himself appears in an amusing cameo as an outspoken, train-riding hobo whose dialogue is thinly veiled commentary on the moral themes explored in the film. But this is mainly a picture dealing in dread and tragedy.

La Bête Humaine contains several scenes of such tightly-coiled suspense that it is not possible to watch without wondering how often Hitchcock held private screenings of the picture for his own education.

In addition to a lifelong fascination with human frailties, Renoir possessed a genetic talent for capturing stunning visuals (he is the son of French impressionist painter Auguste Renoir). Here the director deploys symbolism both subtle and overt to makes his points about fatalism and emotional entanglements. Subtle symbols include the frequent tracking shots from the engineer's perspective on the locomotive, as this inexorable forward movement of the train sweeps the protagonist along to his destiny. More obvious is the camera’s chaste panning away from a lovemaking scene during a thunderstorm to stop on the lingering shot of a waterspout gushing into a bucket until it slows to a trickle.

La Bête Humaine benefits especially from stark black and white cinematography by the director's nephew Claude Renoir, whose genius with cameras would never surpass his work on Jean Renoir’s first Technicolor film, The River. Modern audiences can revel in Claude Renoir's insistence on authenticity: When filming the many shots of rumbling locomotives, only one rear-projection image is used (at the climax, as an obvious necessity); every other train sequence was shot on the tracks at 60 mph. During a 45-year career, Claude Renoir would also frame John Frankenheimer's The French Connection II and the James Bond adventure The Spy Who Loved Me, but the work for his uncle is unparalleled.

The image on this disc is occasionally soft, but this may be more a factor of the film's age than Criterion's restoration and digital-transfer efforts. The monaural sound is clean and dialogue-centric, dispersing audio to the front and center channels. It is unspectacular, but gets the job done.

Extra features include an introduction of the film prepared by Renoir in 1967 (which reveals significant plot points, so beware if watching this before the feature film). In his delightfully droll manner, Renoir notes that the project came to life simply because star Jean Gabin wanted to make a movie about trains. The disc also features a short interview with director Peter Bogdanovich (Targets, The Last Picture Show) who shares his insights and claims La Bête Humaine may be Renoir’s best picture. Archival interviews, a trailer, and gallery of production stills are augmented by a beautiful, 40-page booklet with writings on the film.

La Bête Humaine was remade poorly and unnecessarily in 1954 as Human Desire, starring Glenn Ford (Blackboard Jungle) and directed, incredibly, by the great German Expressionist Fritz Lang (M).

Coda
Although it's getting a bit redundant to note that Criterion always delivers the goods, the fact is, the talents behind this boutique collection of important films know precisely what they are doing. And we like it. For Renoir compleatists and collectors of noir this is a must-have disc.

Renoir directs this heart-breaking tragedy with consummate skill — for which he is justly famous. Criterion deserves high praise for presenting another quality package, especially for a lesser-known film from this artful director.

Copyright © 2009 by Steve Evans // dba Cinema Uprising. All rights reserved.

Renoir's Boudu: A Classic Satire of Bourgeois Folly

Boudu Saved From Drowning
Criterion Collection// 1932 // 84 Minutes // Not Rated
Review by Steve Evans

The pitch:

A sharp class satire by that master of cinema, Jean Renoir, son of an Impressionist painter.

The Criterion Collection delivers a sterling presentation of Boudu Sauvé des Eaux (Boudu Saved From Drowning), a timeless French film and small marvel of social satire, captured seven decades ago in luminous black-and-white by the filmmaking son of an Impressionist painter.

This early 1930s film by master director Jean Renoir presents the folly of Parisian bourgeois as farce—a theme that would dominate his later work and reach its apex with the 1939 production of Rules of the Game, widely acknowledged today both as Renoir's masterpiece and one of the greatest films of all time.

Actor-director Paul Mazursky, a Renoir devotee, would remake Boudu Saved From Drowning in 1986, crafting a similarly broad satire of materialistic obsession and class differences, updated for the Reagan era. Down and Out in Beverly Hills is a fine retelling, and would make a satisfying double feature with Renoir's film, presented here in a beautiful transfer by the cineastes at Criterion.

A bit of plot:

Boudu, a tramp, haunts the parks of 1930s Paris, yearning only to be left alone. When his dog wanders off and abandons him, Boudu (Michel Simon, L'Atalante) despairs of living and decides to kill himself. Wandering into the city, the tramp crosses a bridge near the Louvre and leaps into the Seine. Wealthy bookseller Lestingois (Charles Granval, Golgotha) witnesses this suicide attempt and dives into the river to save the waterlogged bum. He does this as much from an altruistic spirit as a desire to inject some excitement into his life. When he's not cheating on his shrill wife, Lestingois fancies himself an idealistic liberal, devoted to the abstract ideal of Natural Man. Boudu, "the perfect tramp," represents the culmination of Lestingois' liberal-intellectual obsessions.

With the help of several bored onlookers, the bookseller carries Boudu back to his store and well-appointed home on the second floor. Lestingois' high-maintenance wife worries that Boudu will stain the carpets, or worse. The housekeeper, who is also the bookseller's torrid mistress, bemoans the thought of cleaning up after a tramp. Lestingois tells the women to hush, vowing to help Boudu get back on his feet and on a path toward respectability. But the irrepressible vagrant, who never wanted to be saved from the river, repays his benefactors with chaos. Boudu rocks the household to its foundation with boorish behavior and manners befitting a beast. He spits and stomps and smashes dishes in gleeful obliviousness. Boudu is not so much an anarchist (which would require careful calculation) as a force of nature unencumbered by social restraints. He is, quite plainly, a pain in the ass.

Aesthetics, Thematics & Context:

Satire may be the most difficult of literary forms to translate into film. Whether cloaked in bitterness and pessimism or ham-fisted proselytizing, there's always a risk that the satiric film will send an audience reeling for the exits—especially if they are the targets of the mockery. Even seasoned film buffs may be hard pressed to name more than a dozen successful cinematic satirists; most people draw a blank after dropping the names of Kubrick, Lindsay Anderson (O Lucky Man!), or more recently, David Fincher (Fight Club). Satire works best when it antagonizes, when it holds up a fool's mirror before an audience. This shock of recognition can only be a good thing, as complacency is the moss that gathers on a stagnant soul.

Renoir and star Michel Simon acknowledge in an interview on this disc, conducted more than 30 years after Boudu's initial release in 1932, that police were called to restore order at several first-run theaters. Turns out French audiences were outraged by Boudu's antisocial behavior, which remains fairly obnoxious today. Renoir recalls that his picture was even pulled from some theaters after three days due to the angry reception. Society ladies, especially, complained they were offended (or were they threatened, maybe even aroused?) by Boudu's rakish charm. They could not forgive his penchant for polishing his shoes with a woman's silken undergarments and bed sheets, or his rather nasty habit of spitting in rare books of an intellectual or poetic bent, especially volumes of Voltaire.

Yes, it seems Renoir plucked all the right nerves.

Criterion provides a sparkling transfer of this 77-year-old film, with a remarkably clean mono track and a marvelous set of extras. Perhaps the best supplemental feature on the disc (there is some competition here) is a virtual tour of 1930s Paris, incorporating maps, film clips, and uncommonly intelligent narration. The 1967 interview with Renoir and his star offers superb perspective on the film. Their comments make it clear that working on Boudu was a career highlight and the beginning of a lifelong friendship.

Only the absence of a commentary track prevents this superb disc from flying into that rarefied realm of perfection. A 12-minute interview with filmmaker Jean-Pierre Gorin, recorded in 2005, merely whets the appetite for a feature-length commentary.

Why is this important? Because history can become confused and obfuscated, depending on who’s telling the story. The lingering influence of Boudu, from staged play (by René Fauchois) into film, demands clarity and candor.

Renoir infused his films with symbolism and metaphor, while drawing inspiration from his father, Impressionist painter Auguste Renoir, in terms of composition and setting. Today, the son's influence on cinema arguably exceeds the significance of the father's work as a painter. A decorated veteran of World War I, Jean Renoir's experiences in battle never dulled the essential humanity at the core of his art—even when he was at his scathingly critical best in films like Grand Illusion. So a commentary track by a Renoir expert would have added to our appreciation of Boudu. Still, Criterion delivers a superb selection of added-value content, as is their custom. Their DVD product costs a little more, but you can see, hear and feel where that extra money went.

As a freewheeling film fan, I would not restrain Monsieur Boudu, who is undoubtedly raising hell somewhere even as I conclude my thoughts on an entertaining and timeless film by Jean Renoir, one of the great provocateurs of world cinema.

So let us dispense with further verbosity and get down to it: Boudu Saved From Drowning belongs in any serious collection.

Copyright © 2008 by Cinematic Cteve // dba Cinema Uprising. All rights reserved.