70. Zero De Conduite (Zero For Conduct) (1933)

Directed By Jean Vigo

Synopsis

Kids set up a revolution in school.

Review

Jean Vigo makes surrealism in this film. It is hard to give a final grade to a film like this, in fact it is so much outside conventionality that you need to get past the weirdness to get to the film itself.

There is not much of a plot here, kids are in a boarding school under an oppressive regime, even though the members of that regime are kids as well - at least in their Id - whereas their Superego casts them as authoritarians. The language of the unconscious is as good as any to talk about this film which is in the end every child's fantasy at school, through the eyes of Vigo.

Of course surrealism is a bit childish anyway, and it suits itself to stories about children, we are all naturally surrealist, at least I was as a child, random associations of ideas and the fantastically impossible are part of our lives. Vigo seems to capture that quite well, but the film misses what it could have been as it seems at times to be too disjointed from reality for it's own good. It goes too far and not far enough, any idea of motivations is lost but the fantasy isn't as fantastic as it could have been. There is of course the limitation of 44 minutes to take into account. All in all a film that makes you think after you've watched it and those ideas are interesting, even if the viewing experience is not as interesting as it could have been.

Some highlights however are the animation sequence and the pillow fight followed by the processions in a rain of feathers. Buy it at Amazon UK or US.

Final Grade

7/10

Trivia

The whole film in one minute... basically:



From Wikipedia:

Vigo was born on April 26, 1905, to Emily Clero and the prominent militant anarchist Eugene Bonaventure de Vigo, (who adopted the name Miguel Almereyda - an anagram of "y'a la merde", which translates as "there is shit"). Much of his early life was spent on the run with his parents. His father was strangled in his cell in Fresnes Prison on the night of 13 August 1917. It was believed to have been the doing of the authorities, as Almereyda had earlier that day asked to speak to his lawyer, who was due to see him the following day. The young Vigo was subsequently sent to boarding school under an assumed name, Jean Sales, to conceal his identity.

Vigo was married and had a daughter in 1931. He died of complications from tuberculosis, which he had contracted eight years earlier.