Volker Schlöndorff

Young Törless

Young Törless

At an Austrian boys' boarding school in the early 1900s, shy, intelligent Törless observes the sadistic behavior of his fellow students, doing nothing to help a victimized classmate—until the torture goes too far. Adapted from Robert Musil's acclaimed novel, Young Törless launched the New German Cinema movement and garnered the 1966 Cannes Film Festival International Critics' Prize for first-time director Volker Schlöndorff.

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Film Info

  • Germany
  • 1966
  • 87 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.77:1
  • German
  • Spine #279

Director-Approved Special Edition Features

  • New, restored digital transfer
  • A German Movie, a new video interview with writer-director Volker Schlöndorff in which he reflects upon the making of Young Törless and its subsequent impact
  • Rare presentation of the original score by acclaimed composer Hans Werner Henze, with a video introduction by Schlöndorff
  • Stills gallery of behind-the-scenes production images and promotional art
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • Plus: A new essay by film scholar Timothy Corrigan

New cover by Michael Boland

Purchase Options

Director-Approved Special Edition Features

  • New, restored digital transfer
  • A German Movie, a new video interview with writer-director Volker Schlöndorff in which he reflects upon the making of Young Törless and its subsequent impact
  • Rare presentation of the original score by acclaimed composer Hans Werner Henze, with a video introduction by Schlöndorff
  • Stills gallery of behind-the-scenes production images and promotional art
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • New and improved English subtitle translation
  • Plus: A new essay by film scholar Timothy Corrigan

New cover by Michael Boland

Young Törless
Cast
Mathieu Carrière
Törless
Marian Seidowsky
Basini
Bernd Tischer
Beineberg
Fred Dietz
Reiting
Lotte Ledl
Innkeeper
Jean Launay
Math teacher
Barbara Steele
Bozena
Hanne Axmann-Rezzori
Mrs. Törless
Herbert Asmodi
Mr. Törless
Credits
Director
Volker Schlöndorff
Music
Hans Werner Henze
Producer
Franz Seitz
Script adaptation treatment
Herbert Asmodi
Assistant directors
Herbert Rimbach
Assistant directors
Klaus Müller-Laue
Production manager
Franz Achter
Art direction
Maleen Pacha
Editing
Claus von Boro
Sound
Klaus Eckelt
Cinematography
Franz Rath
Based on the novel by
Robert Musil

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Volker Schlöndorff

Director

Volker Schlöndorff
Volker Schlöndorff

Though he would find himself at the forefront of his native nation’s radical New German Cinema movement, Volker Schlöndorff got his training in France. Apprenticed to such trailblazers as Alain Resnais (Schlöndorff served as second assistant director on Last Year at Marienbad), Jean-Pierre Melville (assistant director on Leon Morin, Priest and Le doulos), Louis Malle (assistant director on The Fire Within), he became fascinated by the possibilities of filmmaking as a political tool early in his career. His 1966 debut, Young Törless, based on Robert Musil’s acclaimed novel, was not only the first of his many literary adaptations, it was also something of a New German Cinema call to arms, a political allegory about Germany’s social history set in a boys’ boarding school at the turn of twentieth century. More stinging commentaries on the state of Germany-then-and-now followed in the seventies: The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum (codirected with Margarethe von Trotta, Schlöndorff’s wife at the time), Coup de grâce, and his grandest success, the Oscar- and Palme d’or–winning The Tin Drum, a brilliant adaptation of Günter Grass’s metaphorical novel about the horrors of World War II. Schlöndorff has gone on to teach film and literature and continues to make films in Germany and elsewhere.

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