Film Forum

ZERO FOR CONDUCT Restored Director’s Cut
(1933) Incorrigible kids return to the world’s crummiest boarding school (based on Vigo’s own bitter childhood experiences of one) and then things rapidly get surreal — including the greatest pillow fight (partly in slo-mo) in movie history. This restoration, five minutes longer than previous versions, contains unseen extended sequences and eliminates intertitles used in more recent prints.

À PROPOS DE NICE
(1930) Under the guise of a travelogue, a biting but deadpan critique of classism via Eisensteinian associative montage: fur coated diva/ostrich: café revelers on the Promenade/group of crocodiles, etc. Cut at the time for “bad taste.”

JEAN TARIS
(1931) Brief documentary on champion swimmer, with underwater and slo-mo shots.

Program of 3 films. All 4K DCP restorations. Approx. 84 min.

Presented with support from the George Fasel Memorial Fund for Classic French Cinema

Reviews

“I had the pleasure of discovering Jean Vigo’s films in a single Saturday afternoon session in 1946… When I entered the theater, I didn’t even know who Jean Vigo was. I was immediately overwhelmed with wild enthusiasm for his work, which doesn’t take up two hundred minutes of projection time… Like all ‘first films,’ Zéro de Conduite has its experimental aspect… there are nine superb inventions, droll, poetic, or shocking, but all possessing great visual power and a still-unequalled bluntness.”
– François Truffaut

“The scenes in the dormitory show Vigo in a moment of complete control over the cinema, which bends obediently to his desire to recreate the sense of delicious intimacy he had dredged out of his childhood memories. Here, the editing, the camera movements, the composition and inner rhythm of the images, the dialogue, the lighting, all is fused into a harmonious whole which was probably one of Vigo’s most ambitious dreams.”
– P. E. Salles Gomes

“À Propos de Nice is a witty, subversive, visually dynamic city portrait…. Taris is an exuberant tribute to a champion swimmer… As scathing as it is effervescent and tender, Zéro de conduite was quickly banned. Its executive producer, Jacques-Louis Nounez, then gave Vigo a script that promised to be less risky, a story on a popular theme of river life. With contributions from a loyal team of friends and collaborators—including cinematography by Kaufman and music by Maurice Jaubert—Vigo transformed this banal material into a sublime depiction of love, erotic attraction, friendship and the mysteries of daily life.”
– Kristin M. Jones, The Wall Street Journal