Boudu Saved from Drowning
1932 film by Jean Renoir
Boudu Saved from Drowning (French: Boudu sauvé des eaux, "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 raping 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
Notes
Renoir changed the ending of René Fauchois's play.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Boudu Saved from Drowning” as 1932 film by Jean Renoir. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the arts & letters register because the source frames it as 1932 film by Jean Renoir. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1989547. The Library of Congress control number is n95063788. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1932 and 1919.
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This entry incorporates text from “Boudu Saved from Drowning” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.