Watched Boudu sauv des eaux at the cinema.



The copy was quite old, and the sound bad, but imo it didn't do much damage to the film. It's still very beautiful, and Renoir's early handwriting very legible. The very beautiful and expressive photography by Lonce-Henri Burel and Marcel Lucien comes to its fullest in the sometimes long but always cinematically rich pauses of the narrative Renoir likes to use. Ordinary Observations of people and their surroundings that become transcendent. It's apparent that renoir loves all his characters equally, and even without the satire and social commentary the film would have kept its significance. 
Looking at the images, at times I felt as if I had entered a time-machine, but simultaneously the story and characters depicted are so universal that the film has actually aged quite well. What may be problematic today is the romanticised depiction of the tramp on the road, but times may have been different in the 30s than today...
Anyway, the film works best as a satirical poem, and thus the poetic quality stands out more than anything else. At the end of the film we have a beautiful plan-sequence accompanied by a "live" version of Joseph Strauss' "An der schnen blauen Donau", that reflects the same use Kubrick would put it to some 30 years later. Watching this scene evolving a wedding party on a boat in the Seine, I was reminded of Renoir the painter. An impressionistic tableau, that showcases the beauty of the moment. It is in these moments of outward calmness and inward upheaval that Renoir's style comes to its fullest. A movement that contradicts the apparent calm, but with a tenderness that seems to balance the characters roughness. If anything else these moments just express a love for life that is beautifully to behold.

I seem to be getting into Renoir, as I'm more and more appreciating the lyrical qualities in his work.