Jean Vigo: Joy is now

Jean Vigo (1905-34) was the son of a French anarchist and consumptive. He made only four films in his short life. His first and third films À propos de Nice (About Nice 1930) and Zéro de conduite (Zero for Conduct 1933) are exhilarating forays into an artist’s discovery of cinema as personal expression. These two films are anarchic joyous experiments in which we enter the world of a magic lantern. A mosaic surprise of the potential of cinema to not only observe the concrete in new ways but to express our humanity, to wonder, to rebel, and to laugh.

 

À propos de Nice

À propos de Nice is a silent 23 minute candid documentary study of the people of Nice at play. The bored stuffy bourgeoisie sunning at the beach are contrasted with the less privileged enjoying simple pleasures in the littered streets of the workers' suburbs. The joy of Carnivale and the angst of its aftermath are giant exotic paper-mache masks donned and then discarded, flowers lovingly thrown and then seen rotting on the empty road. Young women dance with abandon and uninhibited sensuality. Tall industrial chimneys billow smoke into the sky an uncanny premonition of the industrial stacks of Ozu's Tokyo Story. A chic young woman reclining on a cafe chair is cheekily undressed until she is naked, and a man sun-bathing turns black. Capricious satire and sweet melancholy. Working men laughing and kids playing on the streets. The camera swoops up and around at luxury hotels and cuts to the narrow alleys of teeming tenements. A true kaleidoscope... like life itself too short.

 

Zéro de conduite

Zéro de conduite a 43 minute fiction talkie of boys at an elementary boarding school rebelling at the mindless discipline, is not only anarchic, but inspired comic lunacy from a fountainhead of deep love for childhood, and the joy of life lived with spontaneity and without pretense. A new teacher points the way: he is indulgent and playful. He is awed by everything. In the playground he suddenly starts impersonating Chaplin's tramp, then grabs a ball from the boys and runs. On an excursion into the town he leads the boys a merry chase after a young woman he fancies, and while she runs you see she is having as much fun as we are in the audience. The rebels take to the roof on a civic occasion and pelt the literally stuffed shirts from the Board of Governors on the dais below with rubbish. The stern midget principal with a beard nearly as long as he is short scurries away for shelter. Surrealism as fun shot at all angles and in frenetic montage, with a liberating asynchronous score of unbridled vitality. Mad pillow fights, irreverent language, and kids sick of eating beans throwing them at each other... Zero for conduct!