Zero de Conduite: radical cinema.

CineAction was created to publish criticism that would address the political potential inherent in cinematic practice, particularly popular cinema. Vigo, Vertov, Bunuel and others understood this idea; they were actively involved in film culture and produced works that embraced social change. I chose to write about Zero de Conduite, a film about revolution, without realizing I would be celebrating Vigo's centenary at the same time--a coincidence a surrealist would value. Vigo isn't categorized a surrealist as, for example, Bunuel is, but his films were clearly influenced by the movement and its precepts. In many ways Vigo's seamless blending of Realism with an expressive interpretation of reality and magic to produce a poetic, ethereal form of cinema--a surreality--was precisely what many of the surrealist artists attempted. Zero de Conduite is both a politicized work about oppression and liberation and a personal film that uses memory as a means to unearth a state of being. Its ellipses, condensed structure, not perfectly coherent moments are attributable to the imperfect print that survives, budget restraints, limited studio time at Gaumont, non-professional young actors, Vigo's struggles with illness during filming, but they also reflect the vagaries of a memory piece, drawn from adolescence, imperfectly remembered in detail but perfectly recalled in terms of experience--what it feels like to be forced into a mould of behaviour that is unnatural and oppressive by way of reprimands, punishment, disempowerment. The film's very authentic representation of adolescence--that bridge between childhood and adult life that is a volatile period where one is finding one's identity, body and a personal voice--services a broader statement about social conformity and freedom. Ultimately, Vigo's commitment to rejecting what is considered successful socialization and his celebration of the energy sublimated and suppressed along the way forms the heart of the film. In this sense Vigo's film departs radically from other films of the period that use the setting of the same sex boarding school in a similar way, to make a statement about the conflicts between nature, instinct and containment, like Sternberg's The Blue Angel and Sagan's Madchen in Uniform. Vigo's film ventures furthest in its support of the overthrow of the dominant ideology represented in the school system and in its spirit of possibility.

I have always loved Zero de Conduite's gang of four 'delinquents', Caussat/Louis Lefebvre (who reappears as Pere Jules's cabin boy in L'Atalante), Colin/Gilbert Pruchon, Bruel/Coco Goldstein and the late joiner and ultimate revolutionary Tabard/Gerard de Bedarieux, before watching two boys grow into adolescence, but having done so only intensifies my awe of the details that are so characteristic of the age being portrayed. The film's opening sequence, the return to school that marks the end of a child's freedom during vacation time, initiates the viewer into the boys' frame of mind and introduces the central protagonists. Caussat is seated in the car of a train opposite a man who is asleep. (He is Huguet/Jean Daste the new teacher.) Caussat is bored and he gets up, peers outside the window into the smoky air outside and pulls in, as if conjuring, his friend Bruel. They proceed to entertain and impress each other with their newly learnt tricks which involve magic (a finger is removed and replaced), play (a toy that shoots a pop-up ball), creativity (a horn that can be played by mouth or nostril), transgression (balloons become breasts that can be touched), otherness (feathers used to impersonate an American Indian). Each show appreciation for the other's demonstration before sitting back to relax by lighting up cigars and suffusing the interior of the car with smoke. The train grinds to a halt at the station. Huguet slides out of his seat and the boys cry out, "He's dead, let's beat it", as they rush out of the car, meet their friend Colin and try to convince him of the corpse on the train. This opening sequence establishes a tone and mood that characterizes adolescence; the score largely supplants dialogue, heightening the sense of fun, vitality and disregard for decorum, which the school will work to eradicate or repress. Caussat is immediately greeted by the school's representative/Robert Le Flon (who is called Pete-Sec or 'dry-fart') with the reminder that vacation is over. Towards the end of the sequence Tabard is introduced when his mother approaches Pete-Sec on the platform and informs him," Rene Tabard will report to school tomorrow as he has a broken heart tonight." The explanation follows the surreal logic of memory or dreams where moments assume special significance that are not entirely rational, but it also introduces an important theme in the film--the perception of Tabard's sensitivity/effeminacy which threatens the status quo.

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Bruel, Caussat and Colin are the school scapegoats who bear the brunt of punishment for infractions, real or imagined, for the greater group. It is never evident in the film that their behaviour is particularly different or in any way worse than the others; in fact, in the first scene in the dormitory the teacher calls to reprimand Dupont and Bruel, Caussat and Colin automatically appear, conditioned as they are for punishment. They earn endless zeros for conduct, realized through Sunday detentions (the loss of their one day of freedom), which accumulates to the point where they decide to revolt. Tabard convinces the three, through his friendship with Bruel, to allow him to join in their plans (the 'complot'). Tabard is singled out as the embodiment of the school's homophobic fears; his friendship with Bruel is surveyed and monitored as a potential problem. The principal/Delphin calls Tabard in as a warning "I'm like your father. Bruel is older than you ... your personality, your sensitive nature, neurosis, psychosis, anything can happen!" which rationalizes the school's policy of surveillance. At the same time the chemistry teacher's attentions and attraction to Tabard as an object of desire, expressed in a close-up shot of his hands resting on Tabard's, elicits Tabard's response "Je vous dits merde", the cri-de-coeur which instigates the revolt. Tabard's refusal to retract his statement is logical. Like most adolescents, he is intolerant of adult hypocrisy; the film places the administration's projected fears of Tabard's sexuality within the context of warped, repressed desire. This is precisely the theme of The Blue Angel; the Professor and his authority collapse when his hypocrisy is exposed to his students, and the concept of morality he represents ceases to bear meaning.

Zero de Conduite illustrates how pervasive this double standard is. The principles underpinning the system are defined by self-interest and self-preservation. During recess, the Surveillant-General/du Verron (called Bec-de-Gaz or Gas-Snout) steals the students' snacks, rifles through their possessions and spies on them, eager to report transgressions. The principal's prime concern is that alumni day, when the school presents itself to the public, is without 'histories', and he specifies, no Caussat, Druel, and Colin etc. The goal is a rigid conformity devoid of difference, visualized in the lined up beds, the blind man patrolling the dorm, opening and shutting lights. What distinguishes Zero de Conduite is Vigo's optimism and affirmation of humanity, and the idea that one can always make the best of a bad situation. The dormitory may be a place of confinement but it is also a place where the boys can marvel at and respect the gravity of a sleepwalker ("Shut up or you'll kill him!") or where the first stage of the rebellion explodes and is inaugurated. To Vigo's credit the lines are not drawn by adults (staff) versus children (students), but by values-conformity versus instinct and creativity. Huguet is used to highlight this idea; he is introduced asleep in the train car with the boys (his feet remain in the right corner of the frame during their entire exchange), in their world, and he is linked to the adolescent sense of wonder and anarchic impulse. He shares and understands their need for spontaneous expression, the physical world and play, and his impersonation of Charlie Chaplin in the schoolyard suggests that art fulfills these needs in the broader social world. In the film's characteristically concise manner, this concept is dramatized in the scene in Huguet's classroom. After Caussat collects paste from each student to sabotage future thefts by Bec-de-Gaz, Huguet proceeds with his lesson. He helps a boy learn how to walk while performing a handstand by demonstrating the feat himself. The class approves and applauds. He continues in this upside down position and draws a figure that magically becomes animated and morphs from a drawing of a bather (which Huguet's voice in voiceover comments "See Bec-de-Gaz, how handsome he is") into one of Napoleon (a reference perhaps to the principal who keeps his hat under a glass cover, as Napoleon's was kept, on the mantelpiece in his office). Pete-Sec enters the room (one imagines because of the noise) and the camera surveys the chaotic scene: one boy smokes, another balances himself on a desk and the camera pans back to Huguet whose response is a smile and a shrug of the shoulders. Huguet understands his students and has no desire to control or change them. During the rooftop assault on alumni day he tips his hat to them, in support of their accomplishment.

The class outing is another elaboration of this theme, and the difference between Huguet's pedagogic methodology and the traditional approach is demonstrated through parallel editing. The sequence intercuts the excursion with a scene in the principal's office where certain pressing concerns are being discussed. The scene opens with Bec-de-Gaz organizing the boys before their departure, moving Tabard away from Bruel. There is a wonderful moment where the principal and the assistant enter the office and after the principal struggles to place his hat on the mantelpiece that is out of his reach, he glances in the mirror above and magically sees the reflection of his assistant mirroring his gestures back to him, as if reassuring him of the height and dictatorial grandeur he wishes to convey. The scene is intercut with Huguet's class outing which is diametrically opposite from the scene in the school office. Huguet is uninterested in leading and is wandering at whim, unaware if anyone is following. Like the children he is driven by impulse and spontaneity and walks off alone; he enters a smoke shop, admires and then chases a woman down a street (the boys running to keep up, falling and spilling onto the road) whose skirt transforms, in a cut on movement, into another 'frock'-a priest who is annoyed and walks briskly away. The principal meanwhile discusses alumni day, Colin and Caussat's immaturity which justifies the need for increased supervision, the suspicions regarding Huguet's performance in the classroom and the school's 'moral responsibility', alluding to Tabard's relationship with Bruel. The sequence ends with the principal and assistant awaiting the class's return to school in the dark, in the rain. Huguet enters through the gate alone ("Is M. Huguet alone?... and the outing? This is intolerable!") and the boys straggle in behind; the principal notes Tabard and Bruel's arrival and comments, "Look, they're together again! This friendship is becoming excessive! You're right we must keep an eye on them!"

The scenes directly associated with the boy's energy and creative expression--the opening on the train or the procession in the dormitory that announces the rebellion--are the most surreal in terms of tone and ethos. The initiation of the rebellion is one of the most extraordinary sequences in the history of the cinema--it is prefaced with the reading of the manifesto: "It's war! Down with school! Down with teachers! Down with punishment! Arise with us! Liberty or death! Vivre la revolte!" The combination of the boys' ecstatic happiness as they march in their procession, Caussat seated in a chair carried along as his night shirt flies up exposing his naked body, the mise-enscene suffused with feathers flying, all in slow motion to the accompaniment of Jaubert's marvelous score (recorded backwards with the sound loop reversed during the sound-mixing) (1) creates a surreality, a blending of fantasy and reality that is breathtaking. A smaller moment that has a similar effect, is Caussat's Sunday outing which is expressed all in one shot: an adult is sitting reading a newspaper off to the side, Caussat is blindfolded and a young girl is busy stringing a goldfish in a bowl suspended across a wire. These scenes most directly express a state of mind or have the feel of a dream or memory, and invite the viewer to share in the sensibility being dramatized. Otherwise the film maintains a more objective, detached point of view that comments and presents its themes as opposed to encouraging any particular position. This commentary often reflects Vigo's wry sense of humour and understanding of adolescent humour, like the principal who is small and child-sized, or the boys in the schoolyard who smoke in the toilet stalls or open the stall door suddenly to reveal another boy with his pants down, or Colin asking Caussat if he will be going to see "Poupoule" (little chicken) on Sunday, to which Caussat responds by laughing uproariously. The dramatization of alumni day is almost Brechtian in its use of stuffed dummies who form the back row of school and municipal officials (literalizing the stuffed shirts condemned in the manifesto) and at the same time surreal in its inclusion of firemen and various gymnasts. Another remarkable example of Vigo's use of style as commentary occurs in the scene in the science class, when the principal announces that the science teacher has generously decided not to insist on Tabard's suspension from school following his outburst. Instead of cutting back and forth between the principal who is insisting on a public apology and Tabard who refuses to offer one, the camera is kept at a distance from the characters that are kept equidistant from the camera along a horizontal line. At the extreme left is Huguet, followed by the science teacher, the principal, Tabard and to the extreme right is Caussat at his desk. The camera, centred on the principal and Tabard, pans laterally across the room as the principal speaks, providing a visual commentary to what is being said. When he informs Tabard that the disciplinary committee has agreed to accept his apology provided it is repeated publicly "under the pressure of your kindly teacher, you are magnanimous M. Biot", the camera pans left to the chemistry teacher who raises one hand modestly, in acknowledgement. The camera proceeds through the principal's speech to pan right, across the room, taking in the other students and rests on Caussat, conspicuously trying to be inconspicuous by writing furiously. It then pans left across the room to the opposite end of the spectrum, past the other teachers to rest on Huguet who, upon hearing that a private apology will not suffice and a public one is being demanded, looks concerned and rises to move closer to Tabard and the principal. The camera pans back to Tabard as the principal awaits his response and only then is there a cut to a more traditional over the shoulder shot from behind the principal, facing Tabard, to register his response, "Je vous dits merde." The subtlety of these lateral pans and the ironic commentary they provide has to be seen to be appreciated, but it is in line with much of the film, which is often shot from a distance, from extreme high angles, or medium to long shots, or in the use of drum rolls, which allow for a perspective that is detached and comments on the narrative as it presents its argument for the necessity of a revolution within the social system. At the same time Vigo's film includes magical scenes that, like Huguet, defy the 'rational' world and reflect an insider's complete understanding of the nature of adolescence: the mixture of heightened sensitivity, the broad humour, the defense of other misfits and nonconformists, the need for physical expression, for noise, for play. Its poetry is manifest in its respect for surprise and difference, and it remains as fresh and relevant today as it was in 1933.

NOTES

1 Salles Gomes P.E., Jean Vigo. (Secker and Warburg, London: 1972 pg 125)