Robert Musil’s Confusions of Young Torless and Schlöndorff’s Young Torless - Part 2
The second post examine Schlöndorff's film adaptation of Musil's novel
In 1966 Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß was adapted and directed by Volker Schlöndorff (b.1939) as Der Junge Törless.
“Young Torless is considered the most important of those films that in 1966 inaugurated the New German Cinema, this stunning, puzzling, remarkable phenomenon, and Schlöndorff became one of the New German Cinema’s most critically acclaimed directors; and yet, in typical understatement, he once said: “I believe that it’s only as a popular medium, a nickelodeon, that the cinema can really be justified.” (Herbst 220).
Schlöndorff acknowledged the parallels that could be drawn in retrospect between the novel’s characters and the reaction of the German people to Nazism.
(Musil has written the book before the period of National Socialism. Today it only appears to be a prophetic parable. Basini is the Jew. Beineberg and Reiting the dictators. Torless personifies the German people, of whom one could say that they are guiltier than the tyrants. Guiltier, because they would have had the chance to recognize [the situation]. In a certain way, this angel Torless is a swine.) (Schlöndorff; qtd. and trans. Herbst 219)
Schlöndorff identifies as prime motivations for his filmic adaptation notable similarities between his own experiences in French boarding schools in Morbihan in Brittany and Paris (Lycée Henri IV) and his esteem for the work of Musil, in particular his unfinished novel Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften (The Man without Qualities) and his play Die Schwärmer (The Enthusiasts) (1921), on which he had worked as an assistant director in Paris (“Der Feinsigge Beobachter als Komplize” 4:10-5:45). In the same interview, Schlöndorff acknowledges his debt to the pre-Nazi era German-speaking directors Friedrich Murnau (1888-1931), Erich von Stroheim (1885-1957) and Fritz Lang (1890-1976), as well as the French New Wave, having worked as assistant director with Louis Malle (1932-1995), Alain Resnais (1922-2014) and Jean-Pierre Melville (1917-1973). Schlöndorff equates the complicity of Törless in the torture of Basini by Beineberg and Reiting to the conduct of the German “Bildungsbürgertum” (educated middle-class) during the rise of the Nazis (32:16-33:34). He then refers to his discussions with the film critic Wilfried Berghahn (1930-64)[1] and their agreement that this theme should be treated as the “secret agenda” (33:34-34:20). Schlöndorff stresses that his aim was to achieve maximum “realism” in the film’s representation of the interaction between the pupils and their life in the boarding school (34:17-35:03).
Hamilton contrasts Musil’s public insistence on the separation of art and politics (69-73) with Schlöndorff’s association with the “New German Cinema” and “his longstanding concern with the roots of National Socialism and its legacy in the post war era” (79). She emphasises that Schlöndorff’s film version goes beyond a “mere filmic rendering of the plot” (80) and identifies several key changes he made to the sequencing of the novel (80-82).
Although the film indeed addresses Törleß’s grappling with inner and outer lives, it places far greater emphasis on the inadequate moral leadership of adults. Thus where Musil extends an imaginary bridge to an ephemeral sphere of human existence, Schlöndorff’s conceptual bridge attempts to link the ruptured relationship of children and their elders. (82)
In his article on Schlöndorff’s adaptation, Herbst analyses the film on three levels.
Going one step beyond Musil’s novella, this paper will interpret Schlöndorff’s Young Torless on three levels: the agonies of growing up are seen as an integral part of the outwardly still rigid, but already crumbling world of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy at the turn of the century; the film is also viewed as a universally valid explanation of the psyche of man that allows us to become torturers and tortured alike; and finally, it will be read metaphorically as the film maker’s discussion of the Third Reich and its distorted value. (215)
Schlöndorff’s choice of locations - Schloss Eggenberg in Graz and the flat, deserted, landscape stretching to the horizon in the region of Neusiedler See, which corresponded to the geography of Musil’s childhood at boarding school in Eisenstadt (10:18-11.22) – did much to recreate the novel’s sense of physical isolation which helped engender Torless’s emotional confusion. This was reinforced by Schlöndorff’s and the cameraman Franz Rath’s use of stark black and white images and specific camera techniques - inspired by Fritz Lang’s M (1931) and Pickpocket (1959) and Diary of a Country Priest (1951) by Robert Bresson - rejecting short-focal shots in favour of a 40 or 50 mm lens and making extensive use of insert shots pioneered in Lang’s M and Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) (12:28-17:30).
In his camera work, Schlöndorff exercises some of the restraint typical for this elite school, using mainly medium and long shots, panning without haste away from gory details. With detached formality and measured pace, attitudes associated with the period under investigation, he exposes the flaws of this once grand era that has failed to rejuvenate, to adapt to changing values (Herbst 216).
The psychological, sexual and moral dilemmas that confronted the adolescent Torless form the core of the novel but are problematic for cinematic representation. Herbst points out that Schlöndorff’s treatment of the physicality of Torless’s relationship with Basini is much more restrained than Musil, although he considered Schlöndorff was following Musil’s statement that the thematic of homosexuality as a deviance from the norm could have been replaced by ‘bisexuality, sadism, masochism, fetishism—whatever” (218). The casting of Marian Seidowsky as Basini, who did not have the physical attractiveness of the character in the novel, may also have played a role (21:35-24:12). As in the novel, the attic room is critical: “The film uses it as the ultimate symbol for the ills of the time, a cancerous cavern in a seemingly healthy body … Schlöndorff has the boys stoop low to crawl into their unholy sanctum – they stoop equally low to cater to their primitive desires” (Herbst 217-18). Schlöndorff’s treatment of the scene in the novel where Torless and Beineberg visit Bozena is one of the least successful in capturing the psychological depth of the novel: “It is the whore sequence where Schlöndorff deviates farthest from the novella and becomes uncomfortably preachy, using Bozena as his mouthpiece for social and sexual change towards equality” (Herbst 217). Schlöndorff attributes the weakness of this scene largely to difficulties of casting Bozena which resulted in a lack of authenticity and realism (27:50-30:12). Herbst argues that Torless, despite his repeated failure to intervene to protect Basini from degrading treatment by Reiting and Beineberg, is nevertheless less culpable.
When Torless fails to extend his empathy and support to a fellow human being, the other’s suffering is transferred to him, transposed from the physical plane to the emotional. It shows the deepened sense of humanity that Torless accepts it, whereas Beineberg and Reiting unscrupulously save their skin. (Herbst 219)
On the question of how far the film can be interpreted as a metaphor for the Third Reich, Herbst concludes it is limited.
Nazi rule claimed mass leadership, whereas the three friends form a small, exclusive club; Nazi rule demanded disciplined subordination, whereas the boys indulge in anarchy. Though they play the power game, theirs is motivated rather by esthetics than by politics. Their gaze is narcissistically directed inward, not outward. Thus, despite a number of parallels with totalitarian systems in general and despite some obvious visual quotes from the Third Reich in particular, Young Torless should not be read exclusively as a discussion of this dark period of German history. (219)
It is instructive to compare Musil’s study of adolescent angst in a boarding school with that Of Human Bondage (1915), a Bildungsroman by his contemporary Somerset Maughan (1874-1965).[2] The main character, Philip Carey, is orphaned at a young age and sent to live in a rectory with his childless Uncle and Aunt and, at the age of nine, to a Church of England affiliated boarding school where he stayed until seventeen when he left early at his own insistence to study in Heidelberg. There are a number of similarities in the two texts. Of Human Bondage is set in the pre-WWI era and has a strong sense of imperial values. Both texts rely heavily on the author’s own personal experiences, strikingly so in Maughan’s case (Ross 118), although both texts are written through a narrator and both authors downplayed the autobiographical elements. Philip and Torless’s growing rebellion against authority is a major theme of both books. Philip shares with Torless a sensitivity and intellectual acuteness, reflected in the descriptions of the rupture of a pivotal friendship.
For as though independently of himself, Törless’s intellect lashed out, inexorably, at the sensitive young prince; he poured out torrents of a rationalist’s scorn upon him, barbarously desecrating the filigree habitation in which the other boy’s soul dwelt. (Musil 8)
It seemed that some devil had seized him, forcing him to say bitter things against his will, even though at the time he wanted to shake hands with Rose and meet him more than half-way. The desire to wound had been too strong for him. He had wanted to revenge himself for the pain and the humiliation he had endured. (Maughan 78)
However, there are also a number of significant differences. The most notable, of course, is that the bulk of Of Human Bondage follows the trajectory of Philip’s life after he leaves school.[3] Unlike Torless, Philip is an outsider, physically impeded by a clubfoot that makes him initially the butt of other pupils’ ridicule, and his family circumstances, which while of a similar class, are indelibly marked by first the death of his surgeon father and then the death of his mother following a miscarriage. Moreover, Maughan, a more prosaic and less intellectual writer than Musil, does not engage in the same subtlety of psychological analysis of his protagonist, and Philip’s extensive youthful and naïve engagement with religious belief is foreign to Torless who, involved in his complex relationships with Reiting, Beineberg and Basini, is pre-occupied by aesthetic, moral and ethical dilemmas (Stopp; Whittinger).[4]
While in Of Human Bondage, Maughan followed the trajectory of Philip into adult life, in The Confusions of Young Torless, Musil finished the novel with Torless on the cusp of adulthood, when in the final scene he leaves the school accompanied by his mother. As such the working out of Torless’s future development is left open, apart from one passage: [5]
Later, when he had got over his adolescent experiences, Törless became a young man whose mind was both subtle and sensitive. By that time he was one of those aesthetically inclined intellectuals who find there is something soothing in a regard for law and indeed-to some extent at least-for public morals too, since it frees them from the necessity of ever thinking about anything coarse, anything that is remote from the finer spiritual processes. … This was why in his later life Törless never felt remorse for what had happened at that time. His tastes had become so acutely and onesidedly focused on matters purely of the mind that, supposing he had been told a very similar story about some rake’s debaucheries, it would certainly never have occurred to him to direct his indignation against the acts themselves. (135).
However, to draw any autobiographical parallels between the character of Torless in The Confusions of Young Torless and characters portrayed in Musil’s later works seems speculative both on thematic and historical grounds. The Confusions of Young Torless should be seen as a self-contained and self-referential novel in the context of Musil’s oeuvre, a study of an adolescent in an inhospitable environment faced with a chain of events set off by the actions of others but in which he becomes complicit and then opposed. Torless’s future trajectory in life is only mentioned in passing and has slight narrative function. The character of Torless seems in no significant manner to presage Musil’s future literary and philosophic concerns.
Works Cited in Part 2
Hamilton, Elizabeth C. “Imaginary Bridges: Politics and Film Art in Robert Musil’s ‘Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß’ and Volker’s ‘Der junge Törleß’.” Colloquia Geermanica, vol. 36, no. 1, 2003, pp. 69-85. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/23981801.
Herbst, Hildburg. “Young Torless: Schlöndorff’s Film Adaptation of Musil’s Novella.” Literature/Film Quarterly, vol. 13, no. 4, 1985, pp. 215-21. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43796225.
Maughan, Somerset. Of Human Bondage. William Heinemann, 1915.
Musil, Robert. Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß [Young Törless]. Translated by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser. Robert Musil: Selected Writings, edited by Burton Pike, The Continuum Publishing Company, 1986, pp. 1-175.
Ross, Woodburn O. “W. Somerset Maugham: Theme and Variations.” College English, vol. 8, no. 3, 1946, pp. 113–122. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/371434.
Schlöndorff, Volker, director and script. Der Junge Törleß. Frank Seitz Film/Nouvelles Editions de Films, 1966. ArtHaus, www.arthaus.de/der_junge_toerless.
---. “Der Feinsigge Beobachter als Komplize: Volker Schlöndorff über Der Junge Törless.” Kinowelt Fim Entertainment, 2009. ArtHaus, www.arthaus.de/der_junge_toerless.
Stopp, Elizabeth. “Musil’s “Törless”: Content and Form.” The Modern Language Review, vol. 63, no. 1, 1968, pp. 94-118. JSTOR, doi: 10.2307/3722648.
Whitinger, Raleigh. “Törleß' Moral Development: Reflections on a Problem of Musil-Criticism.” Modern Austrian Literature, vol. 22, no. 1, 1989, pp. 19–34. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24647678.
[1] See Wilfried Berghahn: Robert Musil in Selbstzeugnissen und Bilddokumenten. Rowohlt, 1963.
[2] Of Human Bondage was adapted in three film versions, the only one which approaches Schlöndorff’s in depth of textual engagement is the first in 1934 directed by John Cromwell and starring Leslie Howard as Philip and Bette Davis in her breakthrough role as Philip’s girlfriend Mildred. This version starts when Philip is living in Paris as an aspiring artist and does not include his schooldays.
[3] Philip leaves the King’s School at the end of Chapter XXI, or page 91 of the 648 page novel.
[4] Although, according to Ross, ethical issues were not foreign to later chapters of Of Human Bondage, the title of which was taken from the fourth section of Spinoza’s Ethics, and indeed of Maughan’s writings more generally (110).
[5] See, for a discussion of this passage, Stopp 97.