Zero for Conduct (Zeró de Conduite, Jean Vigo, 1933, France)

The movie takes place in a French boarding school and follows the life of the young pupiles there. Their life is a sad, dull and they regarded like prisoners of the the teachers, but there is a plot being set for a revolt.

The films secondary title, “Young Devils at College” is perhaps more clarifying and in tune with how the young devils are looked upon. The film is pro-child exept for one sympathetic teacher who enters the spirit of things by joking around in class and producing a cartoon which comes to life. Other adults are displayed as bourgeois grotesques, such examples as the midget headmaster and grossly fat science teacher. The film experiments with slow-motion, animation and trick photography absorbed from the avant-gardism og Buñuel and René Clair. Vigo is also thought to have invented in this film the “aquarium shot”, heigtening the claustrophobic enviroment in which strange apparitions are produced from every available corner or pocket.

The film was banned until 1945 by French censors, eleven years after the death of its director. Vigo was only 29 when he died in 1934 of tuberculosis leaving only four works of film-making. In 1929 he got money loaned to buy a camaer and made his first film, Á Propos de Nice (1930), with the aid of Boris Kaufman (Dziga Vertovs younger brother). His next project was Taris, roi de l´eau (1931) and then Zeró de Conduite. His final work was the film L´Atalante, (which kinofíll showed last year) released the 12^th of september 1934, less than a month before his death.