Zéro de Conduite [Zero for Conduct] ***** (1933, Jean Dasté, Robert le Flon, Louis Lefebvre, Delphin) – Classic Movie Review 8655

Writer-director Jean Vigo’s brilliantly imaginative, anarchic classic 1933 short feature film Zéro de Conduite [Zero for Conduct] is about the rebellion of three boys in a deeply unpleasant, rigid, repressive French boarding school.

Zero for Conduct is an appealing, funny mixture of intelligence, truth, reality, metaphor, farce, the real and the surreal, with un-self-conscious performances by the boys, and a reaching out to film poetry in scenes like the pillow fight in the dormitory. It is also, however, a message movie as an always timely and relevant call to arms, to fight back against repression. As such, Zéro de Conduite found itself banned by the French censors until well after World War Two.

Zero for Conduct was admired by the French New Wave, inspiring François Truffaut, especially for Les Quatre Cents Coups, and was an obvious influence both in tone, handling and subject matter on Lindsay Anderson’s If. Both films have revolt and revolution on their minds.

Louis Lefebvre and Constantin Goldstein-Kehler [Coco Golstein] play Caussat and Bruel who return to their boarding school after the holidays to join a plot for a revolt bu the boys against their prisoner’s life. Jean Dasté, Robert le Flon and Du Verron play the teachers, with Delphin as the school principal.

Also in the cast are Gilbert Pruchon, Léon Larive, Madame Émile, Louis de Gonzague, Raphaël Diligent and Gérard de Bédarieux.

The full original title is Zéro de conduite: Jeunes diables au collège.

It runs 44 minutes, or 41 minutes (original cut), or the original 47 minutes (now restored).

77 years after Jean Vigo’s death, his daughter the film critic Luce Vigo accepted the 2011 Parajanov-Vartanov Institute Award posthumously honouring Vigo for the film.

Jean Vigo (1905–1934).

Vigo made just four films – À Propos de Nice, Taris, Zero for Conduct and L’Atalante – before his death from TB aged only 29 in 1934. He was the son of anarchist militant Miguel Almareyda, who was put in jail when Vigo was 12. Abandoned by his mother, Vigo moved from one boarding school to another. Zero for Conduct is all too obviously autobiographical.

© Derek Winnert 2019 Classic Movie Review 8655

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