War is declared! Down with monitors and punishment! ✵ Zero de Conduite - A GOLDEN AGE IN BLACK AND WHITE ✵ 1931–1949 - The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

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IN CONTEXT

GENRE

Surrealist comedy

DIRECTOR

Jean Vigo

WRITER

Jean Vigo

STARS

Jean Dasté, Louis Lefebvre, Coco Golstein

BEFORE

1924 René Clair’s Surrealist short, Entr’acte, plays with the frame rate to produce a spooky slow-motion effect.

BEFORE

1929 Director Luis Buñuel teams up with artist Salvador Dalí to make the Surrealist movie Un Chien Andalou.

AFTER

1934 Vigo’s only full-length movie, L’Atalante, tells the poetic story of a newly married couple living on a barge.

1968 Lindsay Anderson’s If… depicts a rebellion in a British public school.

Jean Vigo’s 41-minute Zero de Conduite (Zero for Conduct) caused both outrage and delight when it premiered in Paris in April 1933. But although its anarchic spirit was deplored by the Establishment (it was banned by the French Ministry of the Interior until 1946), with hindsight the movie isn’t really all that political, at least not in the way that the authorities first perceived it.

Zero de Conduite is perhaps best seen in the context of French Surrealist cinema, following in the tradition of René Clair and Luis Buñuel, who threw narrative sense out the window, juxtaposed random images, and often morphed into strange scenarios with bizarre dialogue. These were serious works of art, aiming to explore the subconscious, yet also simply irreverent.

"One of the most poetic films ever made, and one of the most influential."

Pauline Kael

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On its release, Zero de Conduite provoked strong reactions against its irreverence for conventional sensibilities. It was banned in France until 1946.

A child’s-eye view

The movie was funded by a private patron, who paid Vigo to create a story based on his childhood experiences of boarding school. This was not to be a nostalgic trip down memory lane for the director, but an attempt to recreate the state of being a child. Some of the movie’s rough edges can be attributed to Vigo’s inexperience as a director, but there are many deliberately eccentric flourishes—such as a cartoon sketch that suddenly comes to life.

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The boys’ revolution against the school’s stuffed-shirt authorities takes the form of an anarchic pillow fight—for Vigo, the essence of the spirit of childhood.

Diving straight in

The beginning of the movie dispenses with any sense of buildup—a simple title card reads, “After the holidays, back to school.” A boy, Causset (Louis Lefebvre), on a train with only a sleeping adult for company, welcomes his old friend Bruel (Coco Golstein) as they prepare to return to the boredom of boarding school. The journey is filled with a sense of freedom, curtailed when they arrive at the station, to be confronted by an aloof prefect, played by an adult.

In the battle to control the boys, the prefect is revealed as a spy who steals their things. The housemaster (Delphin), a tiny, ridiculous-looking man with a bushy beard, is also pitted against them. On the boys’ side is the young teacher Huguet (Jean Dasté), who indulges his charges with impersonations of Charlie Chaplin and plays soccer with them. In one especially odd sequence, he takes them all with him as he follows a young woman who has caught his eye.

The boys themselves are all serial offenders who seem to spend every Sunday in detention (hence the “zero marks for conduct” implied by the movie’s title). Throughout the movie, they plot their revenge, but when it comes, the revolution starts not with a grand dramatic gesture but with a long pillow fight. Taking to the school’s rooftop, they hurl objects down at the school board, a row of mannequins lined up for the annual “commemoration day” celebration. The joy of Vigo’s movie is that the boys don’t really try to beat the system—they want to rise above it, as gallant rebels driven by the irrepressible spirit of childhood.

Vigo did not live to see his movie achieve recognition, but his legacy went on to inform the works of directors including François Truffaut and Lindsay Anderson.

JEAN VIGO Director

Jean Vigo was born in 1905, the son of an anarchist. His father spent most of his life on the run and was murdered in prison when Jean was 12, but he cast a long shadow over the director’s short but influential career. After a series of shorts, Vigo made his lone feature, L’Atalante, in 1934. Although initially cut to ribbons by distributors, the movie’s poetry found favor in the 1940s, going on to inspire the founders of the French New Wave. An ill man throughout his life, Vigo died of tuberculosis at just 29. As his work gained fame in France, the Prix Jean Vigo was set up in 1951 for first-time directors.

Key movies

1930 À propos de Nice

1933 Zero de Conduite

1934 L’Atalante

See also: Entr’acte (1924) ✵ Un Chien Andalou (1929) ✵ À propos de Nice (1930) ✵ L’Age d’Or (1930) ✵ Jean Taris, Swimming Champion (1931) ✵ L’Atalante (1934) ✵ The 400 Blows (1959) ✵ If… (1968)