One Word Movie

Zéro de conduite

Zero marks for conduct is what you get in school if you behave particularly shittly, but this film is fantastic. Even though it was made in 1933 and it's less than three quarters of an hour long, and even though it's about a bunch of naughty schoolkids reenacting scenes from Baggy Trousers, it's got an impossible poetic grace about it. It's by Jean Vigo, who made the equally wonderful L'Atalante, and who died a year after making this film, aged 29. It inspired the Truffaut of The 400 Blows, and If... is almost a remake of it. There's nothing else like it, and missing out on the films of Jean Vigo is like missing out on one of the smaller and more unique pleasures of being alive.

I thought it was pretty good.

Labels: Back of the ead with a plastic cup

posted by Chairman Peyote @ 1:38 PM