“The man who spits in Balzac’s “Physiology of Marriage” is less than nothing to me.”

Directed by Jean Renoir, Boudu Saved from Drowning (1932) is a satirical comedy starring Michel Simon as the title character, a tramp in Paris who, after being rescued from the river following a suicide attempt, insinuates himself into a bourgeois household. He befriends the patriarch of the house, Edouard, despite his lack of manners a social skills, and ultimately seduces and sleeps with Edouard’s wife. Realising that he is trapped in this middle-class world, Boudu finally abandons his newly gained social status and becomes a tramp once more.

It’s a little like a Chaplin movie with teeth. The character of Boudu is chaotic, a force of tempestuous nature destroying the carefully ordered lives of the household and pushing himself on the women. Rude, ugly and offensive, he somehow engenders a feeling of sympathy with the audience, and a great deal of this comes from the knowing performance of Simon, preparation for his role as the eccentric Père Jules in Jean Vigo’s classic L’Atalante (1934) two years later.

Renoir’s film is characteristically humane and thoughtful – the precision of his direction and the lack of any extravagance is the key to his relaying of the story and his fostering of the comedy. It’s not as ambitious as  La Grande Illusion (1937) or as iconic as The Rules of the Game (1939), but Simon’s eccentric performance means that Boudu Saved from Drowning stands out.