Boudu Saved from Drowning
Grand Illusion and Rules of the Game several years ago
and since I found them interesting then and I’m a sucker
for status, I’ve made a goal to watch and write about some
of his big movies here at theblob. Eventually.
The beast Boudu sulks forlorn through the paris streets. He
lost his dog. He is a perfect tramp, with a beard that
reminds me to be proud of my own hobo beard. When he
cuts his beard he loses his hoboic powers and nearly
succumbs to the pretty rich women. A good lesson. He has
the best name ever, Priapus Boudu. There is something
beautiful in suicide over the loss of a dog, isn’t there? In
fiction at least. Boudu is such a solid cartoon of man
unleashed, that it almost makes me uncomfortable to write
about. Like getting a phd in beer drinking, or something.
Writing about him puts one in opposition to him- a sad
place to be. So to keep my own priappic delusions upright,
we’ll move away from the heroic hobo. For a few
paragraphs at least.
Boudu is clearly Renoir’s hero here, but he is not the
protagonist. But then… who? The boring, impotent
bookseller, duh! Bookseller works, though, because he’s
not a simple image of repressed urges and inactivity. He is
after all the only man in paris not content to just watch
hobos drown in the seine. And he’s aware of how pathetic
he sometimes seems, making up for it with his charity. His
charity ends up creating some costly chaos. Renoir
presents the Bookseller as a man in a cage. He’s always
shot in tight quarters, entombed in gadgets and books. His
condition is neatly emphasized, in my favorite scene of the
movie, as he telescopically tracks Boudu’s voyage through
the open air of the city and its tree covered parks. Shot I
think with a telescopic lens, this sequence is short but
powerful, establishing Boudu as a force apart from the
bustle of the working class.
Boudu is id, while Bookseller is everyman. When
Bookseller drags Boudu from the water and into his home,
he unleashes some unexpected anarchy. Unexpected, but it
may not be unwelcome. The hobo has his way with
Bookseller’s wife and mistress – in the wife’s case, what
initially looks a lot like rape is never met with formal
charges. Bookseller and his family need some anarchy, but
Boudu is clearly more than bargained. That may just be
the point here: Bookseller is charitable, or wants badly to
be, but charity can be too costly.
I got boudu’d by my redneck neighbors recently. “You
guys ought to come over some time,” I say casually. So
they do, every goddamn day. J and L, fellow blobbers, got
boudu’d too when they visited us for dinner. “I like the
pole not the hole,” she says as she steals my guest’s chair.
Oh well, I’m a sucker for Boudu too. Instead of saying,
“We have guests, you have to leave,” I poured shots and
laughed/cringed at her innuendos. I almost invited the
drunken mayor of Blair Street, Billy Two Shoes, over, in
the spirit of really offending the guests. I can seriously
imagine him pinching the asses of my female guests and
wrapping his legs around their waists and kissing their
breasts in true Boudu fashion. I want the chaos, too,
Bookseller. I want it bad, but I won’t want it in the
morning, when the bill arrives; when the neighbors ask me
to buy their kid diapers or for a ride to the roller rink. I’ll
wish I could pull a Boudu and escape back to the water.
I’m not Boudu; I’m the boring, impotent bookseller.
But this movie is good. So good that I’m really looking
forward to more Renoir. I hope to make the verb “boudu”
a household term for the invasion of the id. I hope toboudu you all one day.
Nothingcanstoptheblob 