Zero for Conduct

Pupils return to a boarding school at the start of term. The supervisors go through their belongings, punishments are handed out arbitrarily, and the headmaster is a tiny man who climbs onto a chair to reach his desk. Four boys make a plan. On the school's ceremonial day they get onto the roof and throw down whatever they can find. The subject is not school but children seeing how ridiculous authority is. The adults are not taken seriously; the camera shows them short, fat and inept. The revolt produces no result and the film does not expect one. The form recognises no rules. The pillow fight in the dormitory is in slow motion with the feathers held in the air; the scene leaves realism entirely and becomes a procession. It is among the most quoted images in the history of cinema. The film runs forty-three minutes and was banned in France on completion. The censors found it anti-French and refused a certificate; the ban was only lifted after the war, in 1945. Jean Vigo did not live to see it; he died at twenty-nine, shortly after making the film. Jean Dasté plays the young teacher. Who it is for: viewers who like early French cinema and stories of revolt. Who it is not for: anyone looking for an orderly narrative; the film is short, scattered and deliberately lawless.