Zero for Conduct (Zéro de conduite: Jeunes diables au college)

ZERO FOR CONDUCT (Zéro de conduite: Jeunes diables au college)      A 
France  (44 mi)  1933  d:  Jean Vigo  

Freedom comes at a high price, and it's very rare. There are maybe ten free men in the world. Jean Vigo was a free man and, as such, he set an example. 

—Jean Painlevé, colleague and friend of Jean Vigo

Often viewed as the patron saint of French cinema, Jean Vigo, who died penniless and alone, has been resurrected as a man who boldly stood for lost causes, a man of vision and social conscience who may as well be the radical voice of change often overlooked in the nation’s spotty history, the Vichy government capitulating to the Nazi’s in World War II, bitterly losing their last colonial interests in the 50’s and 60’s to independence, second only to the British in what was once a thriving French colonial empire, where, as so brilliantly expressed in Jean Renoir’s RULES OF THE GAME (1939), the French aristocracy continues to maintain a mindset resting on the laurels of its past.  As suggested in his earlier short À PROPOS DE NICE (1930), contrasting the vastly different worlds between the rich and the poor, Vigo saw the wealthy class as entrenched in hedonistic pleasures, squandering their wealth on a life of leisure while the working class performed all the necessary functions of making a city run smoothly.  Vigo saw no way to break through this systematic class barrier without revolutionary change, where in the early 30’s the Great Depression made anti-capitalist ideologies attractive to millions, making the 30’s the golden era of socialism.  But Vigo was not an avowed socialist, but an anarchist, a largely anti-fascist organization remaining active in the Spanish Civil War in the mid 30’s while joining the French Resistance during the German occupation in World War II.  For Vigo, anarchism and acts of civil resistance would lead to a desired social revolution.  And therein lies Vigo’s legacy, as he’s continually seen as a subversive visionary, where his radical political views are matched by the radical influence he’s had on cinema since its infancy, using remarkably original ideas, as expressed in this one-of-a-kind film, viewed as a vaudevillesque mockery of the existing social order, delightfully breaking down barriers at every turn, becoming the generational darling of civil disobedience.  Banned by the government upon release as being anti-French and a potential incite to riot, the film collected mothballs until rediscovered after the war in 1946, becoming a defining centerpiece of the Cahiers du Cinéma group and the subsequent French New Wave, embracing the unbridled spontaneity in the infamous rebellion of four young boys in a stiflingly restrictive boarding school, which Truffaut paid loving homage to in The 400 Blows (Les quatre cents coups) (1959), while becoming the daring model of open resistance in Lindsay Anderson’s IF….(1968). 

Zéro de Conduite is based on Jean Vigo’s own personal childhood experiences, becoming something of an anarchist anthem on adolescence, filmed at the same Millau junior high boarding school he attended, using a non-professional cast, often people he saw walking down the street, basing the story on real people he knew in his youth, including the character Tabard who is based on Vigo himself.  The director’s poor health declined during the making of the film and he was unable to complete the editing himself.  The story centers on authoritarian rule leading to a school revolt by a group of four boys returning to boarding school after vacation, illustrating the polarizing forces of freedom and authority.  The narrative is loosely knit together with memorable shots and sequences, a constant jostling of images in what feels like a raw and recklessly liberating free-for-all, a surrealist extravaganza on display that boggles the mind with the unrestrained spirit of joy that surrounds every shot.  The playfulness is not to be discounted, as this is, after all, an examination of suppressed childhood, where what should be the carefree days of youth are misspent stuck in a wretchedly suffocating boys school where beans are served every day, the teachers are tyrants and grossly inept, while the overzealous headmaster is a dwarf with a giant beard, like something conjured up by Buñuel, though a new instructor Huguet, Jean Dasté, future star of L'Atalante (1934), dazzles the students with his Charlie Chaplin little Tramp’s walk, not to mention performing a handstand on his classroom desk.  Not altogether rational or lucid, often goofy, the entire film plays out like a chaotic vision in a child’s mind, told with unhesitatingly crude slapstick moving at breakneck speed, where perhaps only Guy Maddin’s legendary short THE HEART OF THE WORLD (2000) The Heart Of The World - Guy Maddin - YouTube (6:08) can compare in producing the same electrifying jolt of energy.  Odd, completely unorthodox and strangely beautiful, the film’s reputation lies in exuding a passionate stylistic spontaneity that is nothing less than mind-blowing.  Uniquely original, more mayhem is crammed into these breathless 44 minutes than anything else ever imagined.    

The boys hatch up a plot to take over the school on Alumni day, where invited dignitaries will be present in an overly ordered display of pompous military pageantry, with the idea of creating something an unforgettable spectacle.  The entire film title offers a clue, calling them “little devils at college,” where if truth be told, the schoolchildren themselves never listen, constantly misbehave, are continually plotting mischief of some kind and are hardly innocents (hard not to think of the Harry Potter trio), but the film makes it clear these acts of defiance are a natural response to abusive power.  Way ahead of its time, a satiric film so compressed that every single shot matters, each one remarkably unique, Vigo blends experimental techniques into the narrative, especially evident in a dream-like pillow fight that erupts after ripping their beds to shreds, throwing white feathers everywhere as if snow had suddenly fallen inside the otherwise dreary, prison-like dormitory walls, like those little glass figurines that you shake and turn upside down to produce the same effect, poetically changing speeds to slow motion in a dizzying display of pent-up emotions, a striking parady of the military state and a beautiful expression of the anarchist spirit of youth, the result of long festering rebellious impulses that have been simmering under the surface throughout.  But there’s more, as this fearsome foursome climbs to the roof on the day of the Alumni day ceremony, tilting the camera to show the students triumphantly reaching the top, where they immediately begin pelting all the guests with garbage and debris, insurrectionists raising hell and disrupting the proceedings, turning the tables on who’s in charge, creating utter chaos and pandemonium.  Vigo’s rooftop shots show the gallivanting kids taking charge of their own separate universe, always framed with the endless sky as a backdrop, leap-frogging across the rooftops to their escape, where freedom is expressed through seemingly unlimited horizons.  The film is a timeless ode to freedom and the spirit of youth, where throwing off the shackles of authority is the first step in accepting what amounts to the reigns of maturity and your own adulthood, redefining the world at large, filled with a revolutionary vision of endless possibilities, something of a punk rock anthem years ahead of its time, where in the entire history of cinema there is nothing else like it.       

Two Jean Vigo shorts

According to Dennis Lim in his LA Times essay "The Complete Jean Vigo" coming Aug. 30: A Second Look - Los ..., “Minute for minute, there is almost certainly no more influential figure in all of cinema than Jean Vigo.  You could watch all his films in a single sitting in about the time it takes to get through TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON (2011).”  Vigo died at the age of 29 from tuberculosis, leaving behind four films, three shorts and a single feature that comprise slightly less than 3 hours in total, yet he had a major impact on the French New Wave movement that resurrected many of his early experimental and avant-garde techniques, which include naturalistic settings, surrealistic dream images, changes of speed, quick cutting, unusual angles, freeze frames, montages, unusual juxtaposition of images, not to mention a stylistic spontaneity the helped define the cinéma vérité method of the New Wave.  Vigo himself borrowed heavily from the Bolshevik newsreels of Russian documentarian Dziga Vertov (aka David Kaufman), particularly his first documentary film, À PROPOS DE NICE (1930), which is a direct descendant of Vertov’s A MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (1929), especially considering Vigo’s cinematographer for all his films is Boris Kaufman, Vertov’s younger brother, who went on to work with both Elia Kazan in ON THE WATERFRONT (1954), winning the Academy Award for Best Cinematography, and later Sidney Lumet, including 12 ANGRY MEN (1957).  Vigo’s 1930’s films may have originated the use of the term poetic realism, often used to describe the films of Jacques Demy, but overall he stands quite apart from any cinematic tradition, living and working on the fringes of society, the son of a militant anarchist who died under mysterious conditions, quite possibly strangled by authorities while in prison.  While Vigo’s unique films may seen raw or technically rough, his wealth of captivatingly new and original ideas from shot to shot are simply astonishing, especially his last two films, Zero for Conduct (Zéro de conduite: Jeunes diables... (1933) and L'Atalante (1934), both of which are among cinema’s greatest treasures.  Contemporary French director Léos Carax paid direct homage to Vigo’s L'Atalante in the finale sequence of The Lovers of Pont-Neuf (Les Amants du Pont-Neuf) (1991), where the lovers end up on a barge floating down the Seine.  

À PROPOS DE NICE

France  (23 mi)  1930    co-director:  Boris Kaufman  

Vigo’s first film resembles a day-in-the-life travelogue of a popular resort town on the French Riviera, a wordless quasi-documentary about the town where he lived using bold images and Soviet style editing, often to humorous effect by surrealistically juxtaposing various animals for people.  Using a helicopter shot opening, the film impresses with its unusual camera angles, often mocking the grandiosity of architectural marvels by turning the image in mid-shot, becoming a “city symphony” style of film, resembling Walter Ruttman’s BERLIN: SYMPHONY OF A GREAT CITY (1927) and Vertov’s MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (1929), especially the seemingly spontaneous way the quick cutting, editing style develops a flowing and sensual quality about it, expressed through a rhythmic, almost musical, motif, accompanied by a lone accordion throughout.  Using a free-form approach, humans are initially seen as paper cut-out figurines (including a palm tree) satirically swept off the craps table by the dealer’s hand in an unexpected turn of bad luck.  Initially the seaside town is seen as a playground for the idle rich, where the streets are swept, beachfront café tables are wiped, umbrellas are set up, and the streets are packed with fashionably conscious people who wish to be seen walking the promenade.  It’s a picture of tourists and affluence, told with a sophisticated playfulness, showing a life of leisure, often with unflattering shots of the bourgeoisie in oversized hats or leggy dresses, where Vigo superimposes various changes of attire to one unsuspecting woman sitting in a lounge chair that ends up totally naked in one of the dubious costume changes.  Yachts maneuver in the waves while humans disrobe and cool off in the water’s edge, some seen dozing off in chairs, where as far as the eye can see are palm trees and endless sand lined beaches with upscale hotels gracing the shoreline. 

The film quickly veers into a working class section of town which bears no resemblance to the previous images, Nice’s actual residents with women in back alleys scrubbing clothes in a communal water trough, laundry hanging from the line, cats picking through the street garbage, gambling on the street, open food markets, and men at work, where the pace picks up due to the more frenetic activity.  Vigo then introduces a street carnival with giant, oversized masks seen in a parade marching down the street, adding a touch of the surreal to the banal working existence and the more orderly world of the police in uniform holding back the crowds.  Perhaps most surprising is a shot of frolicking, costumed revelers joyously dancing, as if in an alcoholic reverie, where the director even interjects himself in the revelry, kicking his legs up and dancing a can-can with several of the women.  The director intermixes various faces in close up, be it a proudly haughty elderly woman and a highly decorated military soldier, both representing a more rigid side of the existing status quo, with dizzying shots of the dancers, often changing speeds, bringing a sense of chaos to the established order, again using a mocking tone of the smiling masks, as if laughing at a dying era.  He even shows a funeral in fast speed, an orderly procession compared to the bawdy carnivalesque atmosphere of overly delirious merriment.  Factory smokestacks interrupt the unbridled glee with shots of actual workers, also seen in close range, but this time focusing on people at work, as they are the ones held responsible for building a new and better society.  The film was screened a few times in Paris, viewed with other experimental and avant-garde works of the times.  In one of the screenings, Vigo addressed the audience with his own anarchistic take on the subject, “In this film, by showing certain basic aspects of a city, a way of life is put on trial, the last gasps of a society so lost in its escapism that it sickens you and makes you sympathetic to a revolutionary solution.”

TARIS (Taris, roi de l'eau) 

France  (10 mi)  1931

This is a short film commissioned by the giant Parisian film studio Gaumont as part of an omnibus documentary project called “Journal Vivant (Living Newspaper),” supposedly a demonstration on various swimming techniques from an internationally decorated French swimming champion, Jean Taris, who was then the holder of 23 French records.  In the 1932 Olympic games, as the reigning world record holder, he won the Silver medal in the 400 meter freestyle, losing the gold to Buster Crabbe who went on to Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon fame in Hollywood.  Using a newsreel style narrator along with moments in silence, this is a study in human form, where swimming only sets that form into graceful movement, again changing speeds, also using forward and reverse motions, methods he would use later in his feature film.  Shot almost entirely in a swimming pool, the film begins above the water before descending underwater for what are easily the most rapturously beautiful, shots, told in a playful manner, where on occasion Taris is obviously hamming it up for the camera, but the sheer rhapsodic poetry of the underwater shots anticipate what is likely the best known sequence in L'Atalante (1934).  In one miraculous sequence Taris actually walks on water, so Vigo seemed to take more of an experimental interest in the surrealistic wonders of cinema than the sport of swimming itself.  Despite the commercial origins, where Vigo obviously needed the money, the film leaves its mark with its technically ambitious aesthetic charm.