Boudu Saved from Drowning (, "Boudu saved from the waters") is a 1932 French social satire comedy of manners film directed by Jean Renoir. Renoir wrote the film's screenplay, from the 1919 play by René Fauchois. The film stars Michel Simon as Boudu. Pauline Kael called it, "not only a lovely fable about a bourgeois attempt to reform an early hippie... but a photographic record of an earlier France."

Synopsis

Bourgeois Latin Quarter bookshop owner Edouard Lestingois rescues Boudu, a tramp, after his suicidal plunge from the Pont des Arts in Paris into the River Seine. The family adopts him and dedicates itself to reforming him into a well-mannered, middle-class person. He is shaved, given a haircut, and put in a suit. However, Boudu shows his gratitude by shaking the household to its foundations, challenging its hidebound manners, propositioning the housemaid and seducing the wife. Then he wins a large sum of money on the lottery from a ticket Lestingois gives him and is guided into marrying the housemaid. However, at the wedding, Boudu capsizes a rowboat and floats away, "back to his old vagrancy, a free spirit once more."

Cast

Remake

The film was remade for an American audience as Down and Out in Beverly Hills (1986), directed by Paul Mazursky. For another remake, Boudu (2005). Gérard Jugnot directed, from a screenplay by Philippe Lopes-Curval. It starred Gérard Depardieu as Boudu.