I know not all of my readers get Turner Classic Movies on their cable systems (particularly if you're not living in the United States!), but for those of you who do, I'm recommending you set your various recording devices to catch Boudu Saved From Drowning on this coming Sunday night (Monday morning, actually) at 2:15 a.m. EST.Boudu Saved From Drowning is one of French director Jean Renoir's best movies, a comedy about a suicidal bum who rewards his rescuer with anything but gratitude. Released in France in late 1932, it will be one of the highlights of the Katie Awards of 1932-33, a particularly rich seventeen month period in film history that takes in such classics as Duck Soup, King Kong, Trouble in Paradise and many, many others—at least thirty movies with a serious claim to some sort of award.
On the same night, 45 minutes earlier at 1:30 a.m., is a documentary Rediscovering John Gilbert. I haven't seen it, but I am familiar with the movies of John Gilbert, the star of such silent classics as The Big Parade and Flesh and the Devil. I've written about him briefly here and here. I'm interested in what this 2009 piece has to say about him.
