One year before his longstanding feature-film achievement L'Atalante (1934), Jean Vigo's enchanting anarchich short masterpiece has a huge heart placed in the middle of it all, despite the negativity in the depiction of the boarding school, the meanness of the school authorities and harsh conditions of the students.

Correct observations have been made pointing out the fact that the spirit of this film was an influence on Lindsay Anderson's If.... (1968), which is actually considered as a remake by several sources, including IMDB, as both circle around the intentions of the students to organize an uprising, and both have key scenes which visual techniques highlight the intensity of the moment (the pillow fight sequence was extraordinary). Still, this one has…

War is declared! Down with monitors and punishment! Long live rebellion!

Anarchism as form and content. Much in the same way that the anarchist ideology is commonly misunderstood and mistaken for chaos etc., this film is also seen by many as very loosely structured. The free anarchistic spirit is all over it, no doubt, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t structurally sound, as I only found out in my third viewing, it is much tighter than it appears at first. It’s especially illuminating to compare to À propos de Nice. Both films end with the triumph of the revolution/rebellion, specifically with Vigo’s trademark low-angle shots, with the camera looking up, in propose at the tower going seemingly past the clouds,…

Honestly, for a 41 minute film, this was a bit of a chore to get through. Maybe it's because I watched it near midnight but I've watched many films at odd times of the night, so I'm not quite sure.

Actually, I think a lot of things were done well, or at least interestingly in the film. For one, the caricaturistic authority figures in Zero for Conduct. We have one seemingly omniscient house-master with a penchant for snooping through the boys belongings. A headmaster, who is probably shorter than Danny DeVito, and probably has a voice squeakier than a mouse. And a teacher, who fancies himself somewhat of a clown -- complete with Chaplin impersonations and spontaneous handstands.

Even the…

[made 1933]
If... and Dead Poet's Society were directly inspired by scenes from this film, and it also influenced The 400 Blows. Yet it's almost unknown among non-cinephiles. (I love two of those films and quite like DPS, and hadn't heard its name until today when I read an article about L'atalante mentioning that Jean Vigo's entire filmography could easily be watched in one afternoon.)

The school here is not as brutal or regimented as the institution in If... but I still find I can't write this review without making it a response to this one which says that the children's punishments seem quite justified.

Zéro de conduite is told from the children's point of view - though I think…

Jean Vigo's energetic a rebellious tale of anarchistic youth is stylistically innovative, you can easily see it's influence on the French New Wave movement. The imaginative filmmaking techniques are still magical to see, and it captures the insurgent energy of childhood, but I did have one issue. Now, I don't know this problem I had has to do with Vigo's intentions or just the public perception of his intentions. The boarding school in which the film is set obviously is a representation of France's government, but in every description of this politically-represented school it is described as "repressive." So going into it, that's what I expected to see, and I just didn't see it. The headmaster, a bizarre-looking midget, does…

Not to make everything about The Beatles, but I once read somewhere that someone referred to this as a precursor to A Hard Day’s Night, and I can totally see why. In fact, much of Jean Vigo’s work can be seen as a precursor to the jovial style that European cinema exhibited in the early 60s. Like AHDN -- and like Vigo’s own masterpiece L’Atalante -- Zéro de Conduite is about the liberation of those in confinement, in this case it’s students in a boarding school. L’Atalante follows a newlywed couple in search of freedom within the confines of their stuffy boat, and also within their newfound married life. Some thirty years after Vigo’s untimely death, The Beatles attempt to…

War is declared! Down with monitors and punishment! Long live rebellion!

Anarchism as form and content. Much in the same way that the anarchist ideology is commonly misunderstood and mistaken for chaos etc., this film is also seen by many as very loosely structured. The free anarchistic spirit is all over it, no doubt, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t structurally sound, as I only found out in my third viewing, it is much tighter than it appears at first. It’s especially illuminating to compare to À propos de Nice. Both films end with the triumph of the revolution/rebellion, specifically with Vigo’s trademark low-angle shots, with the camera looking up, in propose at the tower going seemingly past the clouds,…