OVERRATED "ART FILM" ALERT: The following film is adored by sophisticated and "with it" film fans. The fact that the average person may find the whole thing unfunny and bland is due to their just not being smart enough to understand and appreciate this masterpiece.

In its time, this film was seen as quite innovative and fresh. However, by today's standards, it is far from it. I just don't think this movie has aged well at all. The film is a choppy and episodic Animal House-like film involving some brats at a boarding school and the stupid administrators and teachers. Kudos for being one of the first movies of its type, but the movie is only for die-hard film buffs.

This movie is only about 45 minutes long. Other shorts of this era, such as the films of Laurel and Hardy, are infinitely watchable in this day and age. I'm sorry to all the movie's fans, but perhaps my score of 4 is a bit charitable, as I felt it was a real chore to watch and there are certainly better films from France in the 1930s. And, I know this will no-doubt offend many, but I truly wonder if much of the reason critics LOVE this film is because Vigo died so young and tragically.

I have to say I am a bit surprised that this film is so famous, not only in France, but actually one of the more known short films everywhere around the world. A lot of it may have to do with writer and director Jean Vigo's untimely death at 29, one year after this was released. He only made 4 films in his career, 3 of them shorts and all of them are very well-received. I cannot talk about the other ones, although I will probably watch the two short documentaries at some point, but looking at this one here I was not particularly impressed. It's a 40-minute short movie and basically includes boys at a school constantly staging pranks for their teachers while occasionally also interacting with each other. It is black-and-white, which was still the way to go in 1933, by the way the year when Nazis came into power in Germany over 80 years ago, just to put it in perspective. So long before the likes of Pippi Longstocking, there were actually these French boys. But you don't really need to see it. Nothing memorable here. Only reason I can think of is that this may seem interesting to evaluate why it was banned for such a long time. But other than that, not recommended.

In a repressive boarding school with rigid rules of behavior, four boys decide to rebel against the direction on a celebration day.

"Zéro de Conduite: Jeunes Diables au College" is based on the real life experience of Jean Vigo, who was the son of an anarchist militant that died in jail and was abandoned by his mother at the age of twelve, passing from boarding school to boarding school along his childhood. He died with only twenty-nine years old one year after the release of this film in France on 07 April 1933, but it has been censored by the French authorities until 15 February 1946.

Every decade, the cinema industry releases at least one movie about the relationship between students and teachers that reflects the behavior of the society. The surrealistic and anarchist satire "Zéro de Conduite: Jeunes Diables au College" shows a repressive school and is probably the predecessor to explore this theme in 1933. Therefore it is influential and important to see it at least once. François Truffaut's "The 400 Blows" (1959); James Clavell's "To Sir with Love" (1967); John N. Smith's Dangerous Minds (1995); Laurent Cantet's "Entre les Murs" (2008) among others, are more recent movies that discloses the increasing violence and lack of respect for the authorities in school and consequently in the society itself. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Zero de Conduite"