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.

"[1] 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.

However, Boudu shows his gratitude by shaking the household to its foundations, challenging its hidebound manners, propositioning the housemaid and raping the wife.

Initially angry, according to Renoir, Fauchois threatened to have his name removed from the credits, but later changed his mind, and (in Cinéma 56, no.7, November 1955) said: "I have just seen the film again and I admired it and am happy to say so.

In narrative terms, another major change by Renoir from the play, consists in shifting the centre of attention from the character of Lestingois to that of Boudu.

He was extremely well read, a talented photographer, a hypochondriac, a misanthrope, owner of a vast collection of pornography and with a reputation for unorthodox sexual behaviour which he did not bother to deny.