The reality of it is that it's incoherent, at times utterly so. Maybe it was not intended to be left at 41 minutes, maybe it wasn't edited at all. For me it's the typical example of an "art" film that snowballs by the laws of dishonest snobbish emulation into "greatest" cinematic works blah . The fact is that there are no follow ups, the scenes end in a succession of non sequiturs etc. In itself that does not warrant exclusion of this film against dozens and hundreds of little known, lost or ignored dadaist and surrealist (short) films of ca 1915 until around the date of the "Zero". This is definitely a cryptic film and if one has enough patience and time maybe succesion of viewings could offer some further proof of its cinematic merit. Of course the SPOILER pillow fighting scene is a brilliant classic, but it has been done before! Vigo must have seen that scene in the famous 1927. masterpiece from guess who? To corroborate that Vigo's short opus is more a bit of artsy snobbery and less of the alleged greatness (which I would gladly concede if proven so!) I am not unfamiliar with his other equally chaotic and incomplete works. Still, the 30's were so much more creative than almost anything filmed today.
Review of Zero for Conduct
