75: Zero for Conduct

Zéro de conduite

FR  42m  Dir: Jean Vigo

This is one of those films that's regarded as really important in cinema history and influential to many film-makers, most famously Francios Truffuant, but it's one that I didn't get a great deal out of myself.

The premise is that four boys in a repressive French boarding school revolt against their teachers and take over the school. Unfortunately there isn't a great deal more plot that than. Indeed, it takes until nearly the halfway point of this film for that plot to begin- until that point it's a fairly meandering nothingness. There would have been potential to develop some of the characters here but they are thinly drawn and beyond looks there's little to distiguish one boy from another here. 

I find myself repeating the same point often when conducting this journey through cinema history and that is that a good film is a combination of story, characters, acting and production. Every single film on the 1001 list nails at least one of those options but the ones I've got the least out of tend to be the ones which only manage to achieve one or two of those factors. 

Zero for Conduct is certainly excellent from a production point of view. Director Jean Vigo uses all sorts of interesting techniques behind the scenes, the slow motion pillow-fight sequence being the highlight of them. I sense little to really praise him on in terms of writing here but the direction is superb.

To an extent, the film does evoke everyone's memories of being a child under the thumb of the adults we find ourselves under and can be said to symbolise populations unhappy and being controlled by their governments. There is a feeling of liberation when the kids take over but it would have been far stronger if the students had had some proper character development before hand.

The film does everything it can to shock audiences- one French critic compared the film to 'lavatory flushing' and the Catholic church called Vigo an "obsessed maniac". It feels pretty tame from both a modern perspective and on the whole compared to the pre-code Hollywood films being made at the same time. 

Vigo made a film which is all about the imagery- it's a skilled production that did lots to get people talking and as a piece of art it's therefore pretty successful. For me though it lack the narrative and characterisation to be a really great film.