10 October 2006

Boudu sauvé des eaux and Arabesque

(A very poor quality in this trailer)

The first film at Cinemateket today: 'Boudu sauvé des eaux' ('Boudu Saved from Drowning') by Jean Renoir, a film about a bum who after his dog disappears, want's to kill himself.

Boudu (Michel Simon) jumps into the Seine but is saved by the owner of a book store.
His 'saviour' is a compassionate person and the bum is allowed to move in with the family and partly becomes a family member with all the problems involved in an arrangement like this.
His manners are - to say the least - unpolished.

This in combination with him having a relationship with the wife and female 'assistant' causes a turbulent situation.

He finally marries the assistant but his new and organized bourgeois life becomes a burden to him. Michel Simon is fantastic in the rôle as Boudu.


Film two: 'Arabesque' by Stanley Donen with Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren in the two leading rôles.

Peck as a scientist specialized in old Mediterranean cultures, is approached by a high government official from some Arab country who need his help in deciphering an old scripture.
Other people are also interested in the same text and a confusing 'who is who'-game begins.

Even if one of Donen's ambitions is to make a Hitchcock-like movie, he doesn't succeed and the jokes are quite predictable. Not a bad movie but.....

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