Zéro de conduite: Jeunes diables au collège

Zéro de conduite might be a creaky old film in terms of years, but the film does have historical importance in terms of what it is saying and how it goes about saying it. Jean Vigo's first fiction film, incidentally was banned for anti-French sentiment upon release but quickly reissued in 1945 upon the liberation of France from the Nazis. It is, in part, an autobiographical account of director Vigo's boyhood in boarding school as well as a rendering of childhood fantasy. Realistic, archaic, poetic and subversive, it tells of four boys' rebellion against the petty repression of adults and abusive school authorities represented in the buffoonish dwarf principal. One of the boys is a pretty long haired youth who is assumed to be homosexual. The film has been an inspiration to the likes of Jean Cocteau, Francois Truffaut and especially to English director Lindsay Anderson who made the similarly themed IF with Malcolm MacDowell, a very powerful of its day.