Young Törless (1966, Volker Schlöndorff) (Patreon)

59/100

Been roughly 30 years since I read Musil’s novel (in a German lit class at NYU), and I can’t honestly claim to recall it with clarity; still, the sordid aspects struck me forcefully enough that I recognize how much Schlöndorff watered it down. Stripped of his internal monologue (save for one quick diary passage, though of course he also delivers a psyche-clarifying speech at the end), Törless makes for a singularly dicey onscreen protagonist—a problem that the film attempts to solve by reducing his role in the relentless humiliation, rape and torture of Basini to that of a passive observer, torn between empathetic revulsion and creepy intellectual curiosity. This shift does shrewdly recontextualize the novel (published in 1906) for postwar Germany, with Törless representing those who took no active part in the Final Solution but whose silence and inaction denoted consent. At the same time, though, Schlöndorff, even more than Musil, alludes to the worst horrors rather than depicting them, while barely hinting at Törless’ conflicted feelings of desire for Basini, or the latter’s gradual descent into Stockholm-esque masochism. And while Mathieu Carrière’s recessive quality—ideally utilized by Rohmer in The Aviator’s Wife’s (he’s the aviator)—fits the character as written, he’s just not that compelling to watch at a movie’s center, especially when occupying the middle ground between brutal and craven. The whole ordeal ends up feeling a bit wishy-washy, closer in spirit to a YA coming-of-age microcosm (e.g. The Chocolate War) than an indictment of evil’s banality, much less Musil’s frankly grotesque Bildungsroman (which, if I'm being honest, was itself a bit thematically blunt for my taste). Queasily absorbing nonetheless, and bonus points for giving Barbara Steele (dubbed, but skillfully) something to do besides open her enormous eyes wide and scream bloody murder.