Der Junge Törless (1966)

Directed by Volker Schlöndorff. Starring Mathieu Carrière, Fred Dietz, Bernd Tischer, Marian Seidowsky, Jean Launay, Barbara Steele, Lotte Ledl.

This coy, remote New German Cinema drama meditating on the corruption of youth takes place in an Austrian boarding school several years before the outbreak of the Great War. Carrière’s titular student is a conflicted yet largely passive observer to the sadistic punishments inflicted by other boys onto a classmate who was caught stealing. Avoids sensationalism to make its point—despite the seething undercurrent of violence and homoeroticism (and suggestions of worse), it’s in no way exciting or emotionally manipulative. But the austerity of its philosophical perversions results in an unnecessarily oblique study without a galvanizing central figure, and the parallels to the later rise of Nazi Germany leave little for the viewer to reflect on and debate. Franz Rath’s black & white photography and Hans Werner Henze’s score both serve the film’s bleak, introspective mood. Director Schlöndorff’s first feature film; he also co-scripted from Robert Musil’s novel, “The Confusions of Young Törless.”

67/100