Young Törless (1966) - #279

Is there a gap in our reality?

Back in February 2009, when I was just a little less than two months into this massive blogging project, I noted in my review of The Testament of Dr. Mabuse that German cinema would remain altogether absent from the Criterion Collection (and hence my blog) all the way up until I had advanced on my timeline to the year 1966 and reached Volker Schlöndorff's Young Törless. Despite nearly six years passage of time and hundreds of new additions to the Criterion library since then, my observation rings as true as ever. About the only German movies that comes to mind that might ever be considered Criterion-worthy from the ensuing decades are Leni Reifenstahl's Triumph of the Will and Olympia strictly on account of their notable aesthetics and historical significance, but even then, the presence of overtly pro-Nazi propaganda in the Collection seems completely unpalatable for a number of reasons that should be fairly obvious.

That vacancy of nearly three decades from one of the all-time great film cultures in the medium's history was due primarily to the oppressive censorship and persecution of the Nazi regime in the 1930's that forced most of the nation's creative talents to seek refuge elsewhere in Europe, or overseas if they could get there in time. The subsequent devastation inflicted on Hitler's forces and the populace that supported them in the Second World War, along with the heavy impact on a divided German society as it was rent asunder by the pressures of the Cold War, also served to stifle its film industry. Hence, the nation that gave us Lang, Lubitsch, Murnau, Pabst, Expressionism and the "Brechtian distance" basically disappeared from the world cinema scene, as rising talents besides those mentioned, like Wilder, Sirk, Ulmer and Siodmak among many others, found their way to Hollywood where they would enrich the American movie industry with their crucially informed perspectives that served to both entertain the masses while sometimes subtly, sometimes overtly challenging the popular consciousness.

It's a remarkable thing to consider, especially if you compare the postwar contributions made by Japanese and Italian cinemas. Those members of the Axis suffered rather crippling setbacks themselves, but out of that devastation, magnificent and moving works of art were produced that continue to speak powerful truths a few generations hence. I certainly haven't seen anywhere close enough of whatever German films were produced between the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s to hold an opinion worth considering "informed" or "definitive," but I'm willing to take the word of those who know better who basically write off those decades as barren, in terms of the quality of movies released in that time.

That background context from which a film like Young Törless emerged is pretty important to keep in mind when watching it. Its director, Volker Schlöndorff, was only 25 years old when he began working on it, and as its creator's youthful age might imply, it's definitely the kind of moody, disaffected piece heavily freighted with allegorical significance and rebuking social commentary that a young first time filmmaker might choose to launch his career. Adapted from a popular German novel set in the early 1900's, the story covers the span of a school year as a teenager is sent off by his parents to a boarding institution for the first time, where he at first observes and eventually participates in maliciously cruel behavior that primarily targets one misfit student among the group. Along the way, he has a few requisite coming-of-age experiences (learning to smoke and drink, an encounter with a whore who makes a man of him, late-night conversations about philosophy and the purpose of life, all the usual fodder that one comes to expect in films of this sort, that most of us can relate to ourselves as we look back over the course of our own emergence into adulthood.) Allusions to more famous "brutal schoolboys" tales like Lord of the Flies or If.... come quickly to mind. I was also reminded even more vividly of Alf Sjöberg's Torment, scripted by Ingmar Bergman (he also directed a few scenes in his debut in both jobs), due to both the Nordic severity of the disciplinary milieu and the general ineptitude and obliviousness of the faculty in both films.

Besides some admirably assured production values (solid script, sharp cinematography, eccentric but effective musical score and an atmospheric bleakness commensurate with the dismal fortunes of the students themselves, both victims and those who considered themselves victors), the biggest impression of the film that I and presumably most viewers will take away from Young Törless is the discomforting (but at the same time, inherently gratifying) symbolic parallels between the sadistic torments inflicted upon poor Basini by the two brutes who apparently dictate the dorm's social hierarchy, and the similarity atrocities committed on an immeasurably larger scale by Hitler's enforcers as the Nazis came to power. That demonic blend of merciless intellectual justification and savage physical cruelty goes unchecked in the sad little boarding school situated somewhere on the outskirts of a vast treeless plain somewhere in an Austrian wasteland. The microcosm serves as an appropriate and in hindsight necessary stage for Schlöndorff to speak sharply to his elders in a rather belated attempt at reckoning with the ruinous debacle of his nation's recent past, most specifically its misguided military ventures and the needless suffering of millions that their leaders' blood-thirsty ambitions unleashed. In the hands of another director, or if made in a different time or country, Young Törless might be the kind of "message movie" that comes across a bit too heavy-handed, but given where Germany was at, and the cultural revival that its people so desperately needed and in a certain sense deserved, this project and a few others which launched the "New German Cinema" that eventually brought us Fassbinder, Herzog and Wenders, came along at just the right time. As my friend Keith Enright put it on Criterion's web page dedicated to this film, it's a "pretty standard story, but executed quite well." He admires Schlöndorff a lot, and so do I. It took guts, creative vision and determination for him to make this film when and where he did.

Next: Au hasard Balthazar