Review on 📀 Young Törless DVD by Tim Duncan

Shot in crisp, elegant black and white, this 1966 film is a parable of good and evil, guilt and innocence, set in a remote Austro-Hungarian boys' school at the turn of the last century. His message is reminiscent of another story, Lord of the Flies, in which morality vanishes as the young characters are free to indulge their baser instincts. This 2005 DVD re-release includes an informative interview with director Volker Schlöndorff, who talks about his decision to film this story as a bridge to pre-Nazi cinema (Pabst, Lang, Wilder) and to explore cinematically the moral decline that brought about Hitler to power. According to him, upon closer inspection, the line between good and evil disappears, and this is a lesson young student Thurless learns. The DVD contains Schlöndorff's discussion of the film music by the composer Hans Werner Henze. Using primitive instruments, he provides a sharp and melancholy counterpoint to scenes and images that the DVD plays as a single, undamaged suite that can be listened to separately from the film. On the big screen with easy-to-read English subtitles, it's a thoughtfully disturbing reminder of the deeply moving films made in Europe in the decades after World War II.