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…

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…

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,…

Partly satire, fractionally absurd, totally brilliant. The film is combustible. A love letter to anarchism? Arguably, even poetically possible. An anarchist love letter to film? Even more probable: the son of a murdered anarchist's declaration of love and rebellion, of forgiveness and pride. Jean Vigo's beautiful short film, Zero For Conduct, is a youthful blast of energy and triumph. The film physically swoons over rebellion and mischief, completely in awe of a perfect pull. The film exerts an animality totally anarchistic. It is filmed as an anarchist, allowed to progress freely like an anarchist, chopped and spliced, and borne of anarchy. Zero For Conduct is the bizarre, beautiful, and surreal depiction of Jean Vigo's absolute freedom.

It tells the story…

A shocking movie. A picture that uses subversive imagery and transgressive themes in a way that is both graceful and rebellious. A film that challenges everything conventional, superficial, and traditional. A portrait of the pure madness of youth and how being young is, in some ways, the ultimate form of anarchy. I view this as Jean Vigo's attempt, perhaps failed or perhaps not...I cannot decide, to show society simply as how it is; a consequence-free zone full of apathy, disinterest, and dishonesty where liberation is a taboo. One could say that ZÉRO DE CONDUITE goes too far in the way it presents such a vision of rebellion, and they wouldn't be wrong. But the vision itself stands out in strong…

ZERO FOR CONDUCT (Vigo, France, 1933, 8, was 7)

More up my aesthetic alley than L’ATALANTE — a surrealistic black-comic farce, until it becomes something more without ever betraying that. One of the teachers goes through the whole movie acting like Charlie Chaplin, another is a thief, and the headmaster is a dwarf with a seemingly-electronically high-pitched voice. And don’t get me started on the boys and their casual in-group cruelty — they all better hope they don’t get nominated to the Supreme Court, I tells ya (balloon caressing, first thing off the top of my head). But it’s a cruelty that contains the seeds of a revolutionary rallying cry that even dumps the French republican tricolor. There’s bouncing skeletons,…