Rating: 3.5/5
Criterion Challenge 2022 | 36/52 | Stage to Screen
Two nymphs dance in a regal park. One dips the other, and they kiss. Cut to a bookshop, where the nymphs are now the older Eduoard Lestingois and younger Chloe Anne Marie. Eduoard calls himself Priapus, after the Greek god with a huge, permanent erection. He laments his boring wife, Emma, who doesn’t have sex with him anymore. Chloe runs upstairs to prepare soup. Emma returns home from the funeral of her only friend, and Edouard voices his annoyance at her returning early.
In a park, a tramp sits with his back to a tree and a dog in his lap. He pulls some scraps from his jacket and shooes the dog away. The dog wanders into the river. When the tramp stops eating, he looks around for his dog and cannot find it. He asks a cop for help, but the cop threatens to arrest him. A woman runs up looking for her dog, and several officers approach to assist her. A man drives up in a convertible and offers to drive her around to help her search.
Eduoard uses his telescope to spy on women around the Pont des Arts. He spots the despondent tramp and relishes how squalid the tramp looks. His satisfaction turns to shock as he watches the tramp jump the railing into the River Seine. Eduard rushes outside and drives into the water. Dozens of people look on as Edouard swims across and rescues the tramp. A passing ferry throws out a life preserver and pulls the men in. Through laborious resuscitation using Silvester’s method, they get the tramp to come to and learn his name: Boudu.
The film follows the Lestingois as they try to make Boudu’s life worth living by refining him. Believe it or not, it doesn’t go well.
— How wonderful! A member of our class showing true civic courage.
The film came out in a transitional time for film when talkies were taking off. With the space usually occupied by title cards, the film feels open. When the dog runs off, we watch it walk around for at least 30 seconds and do nothing in particular. Chloe sings a song while cleaning and dusting stuffed birds. Still, the comedic intent of several scenes comes through, even if it doesn’t always hit its mark.
The film functions as a social satire. Like Viridiana, it overturns the notion of a “kindly tramp” a la Charlie Chaplin and gives us a flawed human being. Boudu doesn’t know how to communicate and doesn’t want to. The Lestingois wish to remake Boudu in their own image and make him respectable. Boudu does everything possible to destroy that notion—not with intentional malice, but with the stubbornness of a dog who won’t learn to behave.
In this way, the film gives us no reason to root for Boudu because Boudu is an allegory for all that society wishes to ignore. We see Boudu do some truly heinous things—it would be bizarre to cheer Boudu on. That’s not to say we should take away a moral message from this movie. If I were to inject one, it would be, “Don’t take in a stray dog and expect him to perform tricks.”
Still, the movie shows its age in its sexual politics in a way that makes it hard for me to love it.