Zero for Conduct, much like Vigo's other famous movie L'Atalante, is loved by critics and disliked by me. A lot of my distaste for this movie may have come from the bad transfer, which made it impossible in some scenes to understand what was going on visually or aurally. While perhaps not removing all possibility of understanding the theme and creativity of the piece, the bad transfer certainly did remove all the pleasure of watching it. At any rate, this movie is some sort of almost surreal comedy about a group of kids who get punished every Sunday and decide one day to strike back. The camerawork is very heavy and stilted, but even so a lot of shot compositions are very well-done (especially ones with shadows). The symbolism was very often very wonderful. The sheer inventiveness and playfulness of some characters and scenes make me smile just remembering them. Even so, it was an ordeal to sit through, even at a 40-minute runtime.IMDb link: http://imdb.com/title/tt0024803/