ZERO DE CONDUITE (ZERO FOR CONDUCT) (1938) B/W 41m dir: Jean Vigo

w/Jean Daste, Robert le Flon, Louis Lefebvre, Du Verron, Delphin, Léon Larive, Madame Emile, Louis de Gonzague, Raphael Diligent, Gilbert Pruchon, Constantin Goldstein-Kehler, Gérard de Bédarieux

From the website Senses of Cinema (http://senses of cinema.com), a portion of an article on Jean Vigo by Maximilian Le Cain: "Based on [Vigo's] father’s prison experiences and his own time in school, Zero de conduite dealt with a subject close to its director’s heart – the attempted suppression of childhood by adults. It took the form of a story of a rebellion at a boys’ boarding school.

"In making the film Vigo had exceeded the agreed running time, obliging him to trim it back. Faced with this painful task, he had two options. One was to respect narrative clarity and the other was to favour the most poetic moments. That he chose the latter course helped give Zero de conduite the form that makes it seem so exciting today. Every image and scene is a surprise, appearing half-formed at its most expressive moment, giving the impression of a film overheard or even spied upon rather than addressed directly to the audience. This creates an uncommon alertness in the viewer, a slight sense of disorientation as if he were wandering in someone else’s dream. In the context of the story of a gang of conspiratorial children, it evokes a hauntingly vivid sensation of gaining access to a world that is secret and unique to them. This childish universe obeys a logic all of its own which we cannot hope to fully understand but are privileged to observe with the deep respect Vigo obviously accords it.

"Of course, this would not work if the scenes and images in question were less powerful than they are. From the opening, in which two of the boys meet on a train on their way to school and almost ritualistically compare the toys they have acquired over the holiday to the famous final scene of their rising, in which they hurl various bric-a-brac from the school roof on to a sparse abstraction of a commemoration day celebration peopled mainly by dummies representing dignitaries, Zero de Conduite presents its celebration of youthful rebellion through many of the most memorable moments in cinema. If his sympathies rest with the children, it is Vigo’s extraordinary caricatures of the teachers that are most striking – the bearded dwarf headmaster, the malevolent creep of a supervisor who steals the boy’s possessions during recess, the obese science master, the housemaster who ends up ‘crucified’ by being tied to his bed while asleep and placed in an upright position, the sympathetic young new teacher who imitates Chaplin, does handstands and draws pictures that magically come to life. Already seen as if through the eyes of the kids, in the final scene the substitution of dummies for authority figures concedes victory to the boys by depriving the adults of any claim on reality – only the young rebels’ emotional perception, which has completely diminished their oppressors, still exists.

"The most soaring manifestation of this perception occurs in Zero de conduite's finest scene. An epic, free-for-all pillow fight in the dormitory suddenly turns into a mock religious procession, the picture going into slow motion, the soundtrack playing Maurice Jaubert’s memorable score backwards, a blizzard of feathers from the pillows floating in the background. With scenes such as this, it is not surprising that Zero de conduite was greeted by many with outrage. Jean Vigo’s first masterpiece was banned in France until 1945."