Zéro de conduite: Jeunes diables au collège

I saw this film on a double bill tonight with Jean Vigo's L'Atalante. I love French movies but until now I had seen nothing from this long ago.

It seems to be one hilarious set piece after another, I say hilarious and I really mean that. The children are wonderful but the teachers are all there to be made fun of in any manner of ways. I must say the Head master is brilliant.

Whilst this is only about 40 minutes or so long, it is a fine introduction to the Jean Vigo's full length feature film, L'Atalante.

If you love cinema, you will love Zero for Conduct.

This is an odd film, one that will certainly test the patience of many potential viewers given the sad fact that it is technically an unfinished work; standing at only 41 minutes in length and abruptly ending at the point when it was becoming most interesting. However, even in this currently truncated form there is no denying that director Jean Vigo was an incredibly talented young man; as this short sketch of a film and his lone masterpiece L'Atalante (1934) will attest. What impresses most about Zéro de conduit (1933) - which shouldn't work, but somehow does - is the juxtaposition and appropriation of a number of textural and thematic reference points that move from elements of bold farce and satirical comment, to the further elements of silent humour, surrealist symbolism and neo-realist observation. It's all tied together by the strong use of characterisation, the likable performances from these young and natural actors and the still somewhat exciting way in which the various references have all been woven seamlessly together.

Really though, it's simply a great little romp; with the free-spirited kids sowing the seeds of rebellion against the strict regime of tradition and conformity forced upon them by the teachers of a long-established French boarding school in such a way as to make for great satirical farce. In this respect, you can see it as an obvious influence on Lindsay Anderson's subversive masterpiece If... (1968) and indeed, certain elements of François Truffaut's classic, The 400 Blows (1959), with the school-based setting and the ideas of youthful rebellion being fairly iconic in the post 60's sense, and no doubt standing as fairly radical issues to be dramatised in the year 1934 (no wonder the film was banned by the censors until after the close of World War II). Regardless, the film is charming in a way that many films of this period often are, with the smart-alecky kids running rings around the stuffy lecturers in a no doubt fairly pointed metaphor for French cinema of this particular era (and of Vigo's potential to be something of a precursor to Jean-Luc Godard in terms of shaking up the establishment) before a last minute U-turn into more abstract territory with that iconic pillow-fight - and its dreamlike use of slow motion and accidental nudity - turns the whole thing on its head.

It's a real shame that the film isn't longer; giving us more room to get to know the characters and allowing the switch in tone to propel the drama into a more satisfying climax. As it stands, it is still a great piece of film-making, though one that will obviously be a somewhat infuriating experience for some. The experiments hinted at in the pillow fight sequences would seem to take a direct influence from Vigo's documentary film Taris, roi de l'eau (1931), while the more social-realist moments draw on his short-form travelogue À propos de Nice (1930), with all of these particular techniques and the influence found in Zéro de conduit itself later being blended into the brilliant L'Atalante. Unfortunately Vigo would subsequently die at the age of 29, denying the world of further films that may have contextualised Zéro de conduit beyond that of a short-form sketch. Still, as it stands today, over 70 years on, Vigo's film has lost none of its ability to charm, delight and confound the expectations of viewers; showing the hints of what a true talent he was and could have been, as well as offering a fairly worthy experience in its own right.

In a repressive boarding school with rigid rules of behavior, four boys decide to rebel against the direction on a celebration day.

"Zéro de Conduite: Jeunes Diables au College" is based on the real life experience of Jean Vigo, who was the son of an anarchist militant that died in jail and was abandoned by his mother at the age of twelve, passing from boarding school to boarding school along his childhood. He died with only twenty-nine years old one year after the release of this film in France on 07 April 1933, but it has been censored by the French authorities until 15 February 1946.

Every decade, the cinema industry releases at least one movie about the relationship between students and teachers that reflects the behavior of the society. The surrealistic and anarchist satire "Zéro de Conduite: Jeunes Diables au College" shows a repressive school and is probably the predecessor to explore this theme in 1933. Therefore it is influential and important to see it at least once. François Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" (1959); James Clavell's "To Sir with Love" (1967); John N. Smith's Dangerous Minds (1995); Laurent Cantet's "Entre les Murs" (2008) among others, are more recent movies that discloses the increasing violence and lack of respect for the authorities in school and consequently in the society itself. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Zero de Conduite"

One thing for sure, the film's appropriate for the son of an anarchist, like Vigo. The school's not much better than a prison, and when the kids get into the mess hall (oops! I mean dining room) and start throwing the tiresome beans around, I thought Cagney in White Heat (1949). But then they're being trained for dull conformity into the machinery of French society. But these kids aren't going to give up their joyful high spirits without a struggle—just watch them bounce down the street. They may troop along two-by-two, but underneath there's a lively heartbeat that won't stand for deadening hierarchy as the ending shows.

Okay, the movie's disjointed, so no smooth narrative here, perhaps the result of a myopic editor. Still, the 40-minutes is full of imagination and amusing effects, while the theme shines through in unmistakable fashion. In fact, I particularly liked the general absence of dialog. That way, I didn't get a sore neck bouncing from captions to visuals. All in all, I wish Vigo's little classic had been shown at my military school—we could have used the inspiration.

...that in Jean Vigo's all-too short-lived career as a filmmaker he didn't make one unsuccessful movie, despite his difficulties. But seeing Zero For Conduct, which was no doubt a big influence (if only in the details of some scenes) for Truffaut's 400 Blows, I do feel a little sorry for it in a way. Watching it, I kept thinking 'is this Vigo's director's cut, or did they make him cut stuff out'? Because within the 41 minute time frame- which comes in over one minute of being a short film- things happen, but they almost happen too fast. Holes are sort of left in the plot, and only occasionally do they becomes a little bothersome (I wanted to see what happened, for example, when the kid told the short principal "go to hell" as it cuts right from that to the kids gearing up for their uprising for the next day). If this were the length of L'Atalante, it might even be just as great as that. It's flaws, if any, are probably also due to budget. It also doesn't help that the print was so scratched, and the subtitles so spotty, that some of the time I wasn't sure what's going on or if a cutaway was right.

This all aside, however, Zero For Conduct is a wonderful little song to the spirit of youth, and what it is to be at that age and see authority, practically any authority, as a form of fascism. In fact Vigo makes a point of making the title, Zero For Conduct, part of the repetitive punishment for the students that disobey just in the slightest. It a given until after a while it loses its meaning. We're given a small band of joyful miscreants, Caussat, Colin, Bruel, Tabbard, as they plot to stage a rebellion on the day of the alumni event at the private boys school they attend. Even though one of the professors is actually on the same level of rebellious spirit as them- and at one point does a handstand like one of the other kids and draws a cartoon to prove it- most of the teachers, and the principal with the Napoleon-complex played by the funny Delphin, kill their spirits completely. Vigo's world is almost too much fun though for their rebellion to be too violent or with too many tragedies and so forth, and the anarchy is that kind of childish chaos where it almost comes close to a pillow fight (in maybe my favorite sequence of the film, where the boys do a sort of test-run for their rebellion, laying to waste their sleeping quarters, caught in delirious, masterful slow-motion and sweet music by Maurice Jaubert).

If you can find it, and you're already a fan of L'Atalante, you should be in for a very pleasant, early-sound era surprise from Vigo and his great DP Boris Kaufman, with much of it featuring the perfectly goofy experiments with the form that were done in A Propos De Nice, but here with something more of a story. With the quality spotty and all- one of the films most in need of a restoration in fact- Vigo's style never seems too compromised at least, and the sense of pure, cinematic exuberance with what makes life grand and not so grand is up for grabs in a real short shot. We get the little notes of humor, however slight (like the boy doing a little trick with his fingers on the train), and the moments of the dark side (a moment when the principal, with a student at his desk, does some kind of creepy demon pose), and it ends with a cool French school song too. Like Bunuel's Simon of the Desert, I'm not sure if Vigo's film got a bum rap or if he had planned to make it even bigger and with more depth into who these kids are and what the school is like. But like that film as well, what remains contains splendors that can only come from unique minds in film-making. A-