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Zero for Conduct
Zéro de conduite : Jeunes diables au collège
Back to school with Jean Vigo: in his influential short film Zero for Conduct, four rebellious pupils plan a revolt to take over the school. The film was first shown in Paris in 1933, but shocked so many viewers that it was subsequently banned from screens until the end of World War II.
Jean Vigo was a pioneer in what would later become the French New Wave. Zéro de conduite draws extensively on his own experiences at boarding schools and reflects Vigo’s anarchistic views of his childhood, sketching surreal acts of defiance in a repressive educational institution.
Bio Jean Vigo
French director Jean Vigo (1905-1934) established poetic realism in film in the 1930s. He was a posthumous influence on the French New Wave of the late fifties and sixties. Vigo is noted for two films that affected the future development of both French and world cinema: Zero for Conduct (1933) and L’Atalante (1934). Vigo died of tuberculosis at age 29.
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- This film was #20 in the “Greatest” Short Films of All Time 2025