Zéro de conduite and L’Atalante, BFI

An astute film critic once observed that the ranks of the great film directors are short on artists who lived fast and died young, leaving behind a tantalising body of work that suggests what might have been. Jean Vigo is a rare exception. In his 29 years, the French filmmaker only turned out one feature, one medium-length work and a couple of shorts; the longer two films just happen to be among the most influential ever made.

The first of the pair is Zéro de conduite (1933), an incendiary forty-minute portrait of four boys who plot a revolt at their boarding school. The setting is inspired by Vigo’s childhood experiences as a boarder, but the anarchic spirit comes from his father, a prominent Catalan subversive who was murdered in prison. By drawing analogies between France’s repressive education system and jail – the teachers are directly based on the guards he knew – Vigo drew the ire of the establishment, and the film was banned for yonks. By the time it resurfaced after the war, the likes of François Truffaut were watching, and its fresh naturalist style came to influence the burgeoning New Wave movement.

Yet none of this, for better or worse, prepared the French public for Vigo’s follow-up feature L’Atalante (1934). Cowed by the Zéro de conduite debacle, producers tried to foist a straight-up romantic drama on the director. The script for L’Atalante, about newlyweds embarking on a troubled honeymoon on a barge, certainly has the makings of a soppy melodrama. But in Vigo’s hands it turns into the most searingly lyrical of movies, replete with visual trickery and moments of harsh social truth. Far too modern for its audience, it was booed by viewers and mauled by critics on its release in September 1934. A month later, Vigo was dead from tuberculosis. But once again his film drew belated attention from the New Wavers, and it is now seen as a milestone of poetic realism in cinema. Though he never knew it, Vigo’s reputation among the Shelleys and Rimbauds of this world was secured.

Zéro de conduite and L’Atalante are playing as a double bill at the BFI on October 27 and November 1. The former screening will be introduced by curator Nathalie Morris.