Bobbing for Boudu

Over at his New Yorker blog, The Front Row, Richard Brody dives back into Jean Renoir’s Boudu Saved from Drowning, the Criterion edition of which is his DVD pick of the week. Over a lovingly assembled montage of clips from the film, Brody provides a short commentary on this timeless class comedy about a clochard, or hobo, played by the wondrous Michel Simon, taken in by a do-gooding bourgeois bookseller and his wife. Brody describes Simon’s Boudu as a “walking principle of anarchy, insolence, and truth” who, as he eloquently puts it, “exuberantly punctures the pretenses of decent society with the riotousness of a fifth Marx brother.” Watch Brody’s delightful video essay here.