Jean Vigo made Zéro de conduite in 1933 and it was banned in France until 1945 out of government fear that it would be an incitement for boarding school boys to misbehave. It was revolutionary and anarchistic. In October 1933, Vigo made these remarks before a screening in Belgium, and nothing captures the spirit of the film or of childhood so well:

 “In this film I did not allow myself any literature. No invention whatsoever. I barely needed even to bend down in order to retrieve my memories. Childhood, an October night at the start of term, kids abandoned in the courtyard somewhere in the provinces beneath some flag or other, but always far from home and the desired affection of a mother, the camaraderie of a father (unless he’s already dead). Now I feel myself consumed with anxiety. You’re going to see Zéro de conduite. I am going to see it again with you! No doubt I shall rediscover in the train compartment those two friends returning from vacation for the start of term. Of course there will appear with its thirty identical beds the dormitory of my eight years of boarding school, and I shall see also Huguet, the junior master who we loved so much, and his colleague The Warden Péte-Sec (dry fart), and the silent Head Supervisor with his ghostly crepe soled shoes.

In the light of the gas lamp left on low, will the little sleepwalker haunt my dreams again tonight? And perhaps I shall see him again at the foot of my bed as he appeared to me the night before he was swept away by the Spanish flu in 1919.

Yes, I recognize all my friends, Cosussat, Bruel, Colin, the cook’s son, and Tabard known as ‘the girl’ who was spied on and persecuted by the administration. All he really needed was a big brother as his mother didn’t love him.

 Everything is represented, the refectory smelling of beans, the classroom where one day one of us said out loud what all of us were thinking. And I shall witness again the representation of the conspiracy that caused us so much trouble. The night spent in the loft, the rebellion that took place, the crucifixion of Péte-Sec. The public celebration that we disturbed on the aptly named day of Santa Barbara, B for Boredom. Shall I again set off from that loft, our sole domain, across the roof and towards a happier sky?”