Young Törless

Considered a classic film as it was the first film to put the then New German Film firmly on the (international) map. Also a classic because it was Schlöndorf's first feature and it is still thought highly of. To be sure, this is a beautiful film to watch with its superb black-and-white cinematography; Schlondörf's direction makes it into a well paced and staged, stylish film. But I never liked the film; recent re-viewing confirmed my feelings.

Schlöndorf wants to do more than simply bring the viewer the subject and with that the whole thing goes wrong. In trying to convey the deeper meaning of the story as clear as possible the script is written in such way that even the most simple minded can not miss it. The film is lecturing without any subtleties; Schlöndorf never provokes the viewer to think for himself: he has already done it for him. Nor is there any nuance in the psychology of the different characters.

And what about the cast? In 1966 (and still) praised for their effort as inexperienced actors. Well, I think that most of the acting is downright poor, or never goes further than reciting lines. In the meantime we have come to know Mathieu Carriere better during his career; Carriere is in this his first film as boring as he still is. Of course the actors were not helped much by the literary dialogue, another feature that was (and is) praised so much; most of it I find simply laughable. Classic miscast is Barbara Steele, who seems to have walked in from the set of a typical sexploitation film, including acting style.

Volker Schlondorff has been acclaimed by critics for such films as 'The Tin Drum', 'The Lost Honour of Katherina Blum', and 'Coup de Grace'; all of them films based on fine novels by Gunter Grass, Heinrich Boll and Marguerite Yourcenar respectively, and yet forerunner though he was to the German New Wave Cinema has never been quite given the same acclaim as Wim Wenders, Werner Herzog and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and I wonder if it is because he films (excellently) from literary sources. His films have a cold look and an enquiring one and 'Young Torless' based on Robert Musil's novel 'The Confusions of Master Young Torless' is one of his best adaptations. The book is as coldly written as the film, and Schlondorff does it justice by using an austere black and white photography, but has as soundtrack Hans Werner Henze's fine if equally emotionless score. Sadly in the current climate of cinema most of these names will seem unknown, lost in the mists of the latter part of the 20th Century. As so many reviewers have given away the plot I will not give in to too many spoilers other than to say it is set on the Austrian-Hungarian border land in an Academy for young male students. In 1906 when it was published there was no such conception of Nazism as we know it, nor was there much in print on sadistic, murderous homosexual torture. Even in 1966 it was brave to put this on film and so unsparingly, and his choice of cast was well chosen. Mathieu Carriere plays the lead role as the 'watcher' and sometimes participator of these perverse pleasures taken by two other students as well as him, and most of the time he looks piously on, studying evil more than opposing it and becomes the worst of all of them as he condones by reason what he sees before him. He is in a way a coward, and unlike the other two admirably played by Bernd Tisch and Fred Diets he hypocritically shows less sexual and sadistic pleasure. I regret that the homosexuality was only obliquely shown, but given the nature of the subject in 1966 it was 'normal' to withdraw the camera for what would have been unacceptable viewing, and only the brutality of the sadism is sickening and fully shown. I give it a 10 for its brilliant attempt to tackle the Musil book and there is a certain failure in the director's approach by him being too cautious, but all the same it succeeds on so many levels that I feel it deserves a 10. It was unique then, and should not be as forgotten as it is now, and was in its way also a forerunner of openly homosexual subject matter. Its political aspects are made too much of as in my opinion it shows the savagery of men hidden away behind polite surfaces; a subject matter as controversial as it is still, and I am thinking of the recent film 'Goat' dealing with hazing in modern Academic schools which has equally been given less distribution than it should have been.

1. It's been said here that the gay content of the story has been removed. Well, the novel was released in 1905. We can nowadays interpret elements of the story in a gay context, but back then these notions did not exist. If Schlöndorff hints at homosexuality as an element of perversion, that is in fact faithful to the novel, which takes a strictly observatory, non-participating stance.

2. 'Törless' is often interpreted as an indicator of upcoming intolerance and Nazidom. Again, the novel was released at a much too early time to allow for such an interpretation; the novel's author Robert Musil certainly envisioned the inevitable fall of an empire stuck to tradition and incapable of accommodating personal liberties. Schlöndorff pushes some of the juvenile delinquents into similarities with the Nazis - albeit being carefully ambiguous about it -, but it would be wrong to consider this interpretation as a part of the original narrative.

3. 'Törless' is a highly psychological tale and film - again, Schlöndorff proves faithful to the novel in this respect. But this comes with the weakness of constructing characters around a certain social concept. It would be misleading to consider Törless and his rebellious friends as typical representatives of their era, or real figures upon which the author based his characters. As may be more obvious in Musil's masterpiece, 'The Man without Qualities', his characters are crafted to evoke rather a situation than a person; that makes his books almost impossible to adapt correctly.

Schlöndorff's film is somewhat middlebrow; it does not intend to be a substitute for reading the novel, but at the same time it carefully avoids to give the impression that it is anything but a rendition of it. That's not quite true; the interpretation is in the framing, the omissions of the subtext, and that the ideas upon watching the film differ considerably from those you get when you read the novel. One may call it therefore a failure - but an interesting failure to watch.

Faithfully adapted from author Robert Musil, this study of sadism and masochism among students at an Austro-Hungarian boys prep school is a parable of fascism and its origins. Barbara Steele is radiant and splendid as Bozena the prostitute who awakens the nascent sexual nature of the adolescent students. Lovingly photographed in black and white, YOUNG TORLESS evokes the mood and claustrophobic horror of the dehumanizing military system. Matthew Carriere gives an unblemished and heartfelt performance as an innocent caught behind the barbed wire walls of his very soul and the duty to which he has been placed. A must-see for everyone and an advocacy for pacificism. This was Volker Schloendorff's first film, and by admission one of Barbara Steele's favorite roles.

Young Törless is a pertinent reflection on good and evil and the way an individual behaves, given the lack of values in others.

In comparison with the moral and ethical values required by institutions, human behavior seems to follow an errant, amoral path, simply determined by chance, or the current of events. Especially when manifested in a group, human beings lose any values and act according to the tide. They practice excesses and suffer humiliations instinctively, as if they were a fatality of life.

The few who show the courage to remain faithful to fundamental values are marginalized, seen as outsiders, labeled as dreamers.

Being a German film from 1966, it is impossible not to relate this criticism to the rise and fall of Nazism, just 21 years earlier.

A film in which Volker Schlöndorff puts a finger on the wound of Nazism, still open in German society, and forces his compatriots to reflect on the mistakes of the past.