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Let's say what this doesn't have; riveting drama, well rounded characters, plush visuals, none of that is at stake here even as consideration. Which is for the better, if you're like me, and you want to see what life can be when freed from confines of story.

It's not even a film that directly fulfills me so much as how it paves a path for things to be done a certain way. See, many films from the era anticipate later movements, it was a fertile time. But none other so fully prophesies French New Wave in particular as this one here.

Look at the tropes and tell me.

The whole film is a series of improvised playing around against the rigid limits imposed by a story - given to us as kids fretting with the (storytelling) routine of a boarding school and its teachers. What little story there is, is for the kids to run around and play- act.

Teachers are shown as suitably buffoonish. The only one who is on their side, who shares in their playing, at one point does a Chaplin impersonation to amuse them. It's the same self-referential appraisal of movies as ideals that we find twenty years later in Godard.

And eventually it's about rebellion. The kids conspire to stage a revolt that takes over the whole school, this on the same day as an important public ceremony is supposed to take place on the grounds. The ceremony is turned into a circus, smashed up. The kids walk triumphant on the roof of the school, heroes of the revolution. French students would rejoice to see this in '68. The film was banned at the time as morally dangerous.

You can see how Vigo was born to anarchist parents, how he was a poet by inclination who wanted the spontaneous burst that turns life upside down and climbs up to where a view is possible. He was cut tragically short while on his way to becoming a Fellini, the story goes.