Zero for Conduct – 1933 Vigo - The Cinema Archives

Zero for Conduct has an interesting use of Eisenstein’s character collective and one of the most important uses of early film style with the slow-motion photography pillow fight scene
Jean Vigo’s filmography is brief—he died at the age 29 from tuberculosis in 1934 the year following Zero for Conduct but his impact is lasting
A short film- 44 minutes- my archives includes a few short films- this, one from Renoir, Bunuel—directors that have fiction features and are worthy of study. This one is especially significant because of Vigo’s lack of filmography (it is really this and L’Atalante the following year) and the landmark use of film style
Certainly influential to a generation of filmmakers – both inside and outside of France. Truffaut is very open about the influence of Vigo and this film specifically on The 400 Blows, themes of anarchy (Lindsay Anderson’s If…. does not happen without this films) and in general the themes of rebellion and challenging the status quo (both artistically and politically) in Godard and others in the 1960’s
The three/fourths overhead angle used again and by Vigo is important—most films (then and now) used the box as their frame, the close-up, or overhead but this almost makes Vigo seem self-taught—not quite on the level of what Welles would do with angles in the 1940’s but still. One thing it leads to is it makes our protagonist here the collective- just like Eisenstein’s montage did in the 1920’s. We’re 10 minutes into a 44 minute film and the viewer isn’t made aware of what the boys really look like that are driving this style. The frame set-ups, the row of beds at night, the row of tables at lunch, the row of desks at school (and Vigo’s camera subtly tracking them)—rhythmical, repetition, formally sound

The three/fourths overhead angle used again and by Vigo is important. The frame set-ups, the row of beds at night, the row of tables at lunch, the row of desks at school (and Vigo’s camera subtly tracking them)—rhythmical, repetition, formally sound

Again, anarchy (Marx Brothers, the finale in MASH)- this interests me less– the politics of the pranks and rebellion vs. what’s more important artistically which is how Vigo does that through visual style –
Titles used throughout about their plot, Charlie Chaplin impression
The poetry in motion pillow fight slowing down of the photography moment at 38 minutes—less than 1 minute long and it is gob-smacking visual cinema. Breathtaking. One of those seminal cinematic moments. Eisenstein would slow the camera speed down for like the Odessa Steps sequence and that predates this, but not to this level of slow-motion (and his was about prolonging a scene through repetition and editing, not slowing one shot down to slow motion), Cocteau uses it in the 1940’s, and of course, probably most famously, Kurosawa in Seven Samurai- then the lineage picks up with the conclusion of Bonnie and Clyde and Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. This film and Vigo, doesn’t take away from those films or filmmakers, they’re all essential