Pillow Fight. Zero De Conduite. Jean Vigo

  

Set to the watery strains of a backward voice and orchestra, a boarding school rebellion ends with this short-breath of a scene where, ”in a storm of burst pillows, a boy flips onto a chair being carried in a slow motion procession of anarchic students.
Jean Vigo’s 1933 film Zero For Conduct might be the first truly great movie about teenage angst. In it, the cruel and absurd demands of teachers are upended while the youth band in solidarity. But Vigo’s dreamlike war of feathers and tin cans were apparently too much for the French establishment who banned the film until 1945 for it’s anti-authoritarian message.

The French censors may have had cause to be so jumpy, the nineteen-thirties were of course an extremely volatile period in Europe, as a world economic crisis deepened, there was a real sense that the established order was collapsing. Fascism and communism had been battling violently to seize power from weakened democracies and monarchies since the end of the First World War. In Berlin, Rome and Madrid, this battle was won by the Fascists as Europe began to arm itself for an even more destructive conflict.

But Vigo isn’t interested in the justifications of any power structure. In his view, all authority is inherently corruptible and abusive and his youthful allegiance is to the those who are trapped beneath the larger systems of imposed discipline. After all, it’s the boys in his film hoisting their flag above the school who would soon fight and die on the nightmarish battlefields of World War II.

Together with his 1934 masterpiece L’Atalante, Vigo made his reputation as one of cinema’s transcendent artists. Both films are elegant, unsentimental and effortlessly simple.

The son of a militant radical murdered in prison, Vigo was tubercular from childhood and his life was lived under it’s shadow. His films were unsuccessful, butchered by inept studio bosses, nearly lost and soon after finishing L’Atalante, he died a tragically young 29.

watch the whole film here.
“To the rear grandfather
To the rear Father and Mother
To the rear grandfathers
To the rear old Soldiers
To the rear old chaplains
To the rear old bags
The performance is over
Now for the kids
The show’s about to begin.”
From the poem ‘HARD TIMES’ by Jaques Praveret

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 25th, 2008 at 20:21. It is filed under Show & Tell. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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