**apologies for cross-postings** Hello, all. One of my undergraduate students recently submitted a paper on Jean Vigo's _Zero for Conduct_, and I fear that parts of it may have been plagiarized. I would like to call on the collective wisdom of this list's membership to help me identify the possible source(s) for this paper's unattributed statements. Here are some sample quotations from the paper that contain no documentation: "In 1933, the young and talented director Jean Vigo was forced to overcome many obstacles constant [sic] in the path of his film, _Zero for Conduct_. Many of these challenges dealt with the fact that Vigo was relying heavily on improvisation, and, for the most part, was merely inventing scenes as the filming proceeded. ... Still another of these barriers was the fact that Vigo so closely identified with many of the characters in the film, and it soon became obvious that Vigo was using _Zero for Conduct_ as a vehicle to make public the abominations that many children bear in the face of authority. However, by far the largest and most formidable of these tasks involved scaling an insurmountable wall of censorship by the French government, the clergy, and the media." "As the film moves forward, the viewer will notice that, typical of young boys, Tabard, being new, is teased for being 'frail' and 'girl-like.' It is not so far into the film after this that the viewer will begin to realize that Tabard is Vigo himself, emotionally and physically reconstructed in his childhood." "When _Zero for Conduct_ was released in 1933, it was met with a variance of critical judgments, with the majority of these being negative." "It is obvious that one of the main themes of _Zero for Conduct_ is rebellion against authority. Equally as well known were Vigo's political opinions -- sympathetic with the Soviet Union and the communist regime, but also no where near combative, and, more often than not, annoyed by politics. These two aggravations alone were cause enough for the French government to cry anarchist themes." I have examined several texts on Vigo and French cinema in my school's library but have found nothing that matches these statements. If they ring any bells with you, please reply to me off-list at <[log in to unmask]>. I would appreciate any leads. thanks, Marty Norden ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Martin F. Norden OO Dept. of Communication, Box 34815 [log in to unmask] [_]<| University of Massachusetts-Amherst fax: 413 545-6399 /|\ Amherst, MA 01003-4815 USA vox: 413 545-0598, -1311 home page: http://www-unix.oit.umass.edu/~norden ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite