Zero for Conduct (1933)
★ — Zero for Conduct (1933)
Jean Vigo made only four films before his death from tuberculosis in 1934, at the age of twenty-nine, yet his reputation in French cinema is substantial enough to have a major national prize named after him. Zero for Conduct (Zéro de conduite: Jeunes diables au collège) was his second, completed in 1933 on a modest production funded by Franfilmdis and Argui-Film, and it runs to just forty-eight minutes, placing it in that awkward category somewhere between short film and feature. It drew directly on Vigo's own experience as a boarder at schools in southern France, giving the material a personal charge that was unusual for the period. French censors promptly banned it, judging its portrait of authority figures as subversive and its schoolboy antics as indecent. That ban held until 1945, meaning the film spent more than a decade unseen in its home country, which only added to its mythological status once it was finally released.
The story, such as it is, centres on four pupils at a repressive boarding school who resolve to overturn the established order on a day of official celebration, turning the institution's own ceremonial occasion against the adults who run it. Vigo directs with an anarchic looseness that owes something to the avant-garde currents of early 1930s European cinema, and the film has since been credited as a formative influence on everything from Lindsay Anderson's If... to the Nouvelle Vague. The principal cast, led by Jean Dasté (who also appeared in Vigo's earlier À propos de Nice) alongside Robert le Flon, Du Verron, Delphin and Léon Larive, were largely non-professionals or theatre performers rather than established screen actors, which gives the whole thing a rough, improvised texture. Whether that texture reads as liberating or simply unpolished is a question that tends to divide viewers rather cleanly. It is worth noting for context that 1933 was a particularly crowded year for cinema on both sides of the Atlantic: other films from the same period, such as The Invisible Man, show just how varied the range of ambition and polish could be even within a single year. And for those interested in how French cinema across the decades has returned again and again to themes of youthful resilience and institutional constraint, there is an interesting through-line to later French-language work I have covered here, including Mustang and Sugar Cane Alley, both of which handle similar territory with rather different results.
Zero for Conduct (1933) is one of those films whose historical importance vastly outweighs its entertainment value. Jean Vigo's 41-minute rebellion fantasy, schoolboys rising up against tyrannical teachers in a French boarding school, was radical for its time and undoubtedly influenced generations of filmmakers. But watched today without the context of 1930s cinema, it feels rudimentary to the point of tedium. The pacing is sluggish, the child actors' performances veer into amateurish caricature, and the much-celebrated pillow fight/rebellion sequence (while charming in concept) plays out with such languid simplicity that it fails to generate real excitement. What might have felt anarchic and liberating in 1933 now reads as a basic, almost naive depiction of youthful revolt. There's little narrative tension, minimal character depth, and a dreamlike quality that drifts into aimlessness. As a film to actually watch, it's dull, simplistic, and emotionally inert. Some classics earn reverence through legacy alone. This is one of them: important to film history, but nearly impossible to enjoy on its own terms.
I find myself more or less where that leaves things: acknowledging the film's place in the canon without feeling any particular warmth towards the experience of actually sitting through it. There is something faintly uncomfortable about admitting that a film celebrated by critics and filmmakers for nearly a century left me cold, but honesty seems more useful than reverence here. Vigo's personal investment in the material is evident, and the instinct to treat childhood rebellion as worthy of cinematic attention was genuinely ahead of its time. It just does not translate, for me, into something that holds the attention in the present day. Some films earn their place in the history books and nowhere else.
Rating: ★ | Year: 1933 | Watched: 2026-03-23
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from France: Fantastic Planet (1973) · Letter from Siberia (1957) · Lessons of Darkness (1992) · Here and Elsewhere (1976)
More from the 1930s: Earth (1930) · Monkey Business (1931) · Sabotage (1936) · People on Sunday (1930)
More comedy: The Eagle (1925) · The General (1926) · Americana (2023) · The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad! (1988)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
