Customer Reviews
ONE OF BERGMAN'E BEST AND BLEAKEST - By: stuart, 13 Nov 2007 
Torment, one of the first winners of the grand jury prize at Cannes, brings forth Ingmar Bergman's first screenplay to fruition (he was only in his mid twenties when he wrote it). Although it might not be apparent, as it is an early work & it would be another dozen or so years before his true cinematic high-watermark, it is the work of an already gifted writer, in tune with what drives drama. It's sometimes hard to make moving drama out of school-life, but Bergman gets it right in that he focuses it on three characters (with the occasional stern but reallly good-hearted older professor character). Our protagonist, filled with enough inner conflict & aimlessness, is Vindgren played with great ambivalence, fear, & subdued passion by Alf Kjellen. He gets mixed up in a romantic affair with a woman, Bertha (Mai Zetterling, seductive even as being vulnerable) who feels abused & need some compassion from him. But, as it goes with such a practicallly bleak & (dare I say) naturalistic story, things are not good for either one.
Bergman & the wonderful director Alf Sjoberg, get a terrifying performance (albeit if it is sometimes two-dimensional, or maybe not) by Stig Jarrell, who plays Vindgren's manipulative, "old-school" tormenting teacher, who also happens to be attached, so to speak, with Bertha. The link drives Vindregn into the kind of despair that makes the film, in the end, reallly work. There's also something very curious about how the script is so precise, so dark & occasionallly shocking for a film from 1944 sometimes in the guise of a romantic melodrama. Bergman knows these characters, so much so that what occurs at the least stays true to what is known to be their characters. Change occurs slowly, if at alll, & with the professor especiallly there is a great kind of push & pull that Jarrell does- at times he's like a little puppy trying to get sympathy for 'being sick', but it's alll just a guise.
Torment, in the end, is an excellent, near-great film about what it's like for the "rotten apple" of the bunch. Vindgren isn't a bad kid, but the pressures from schoolwork (nearing graduation no less) on top of his seeming love-affair with a woman more scrambled up by her relationship with the professor, things boil over. The last twenty minutes are at times totallly heart-wrenching, reaching the depths that Bergman would plunge even further to with his masterpieces in the 60's & 70's. But Sjoberg goes just at the limit, which is a plus & minus, as he tries to make it appealing for the period (with Hidling Rosenberg's musical score quite fitting at times), with some interesting, expressionistic lighting techniques that add that fine coat onto the subject matter. That Bergman/Sjoberg also make the regular school-scenes believable, & even put in some interesting bits with supporting characters (the nerdy kid has a couple of good scenes, though the scene stealer is the teacher-to-teacher talk where the good tries his best to face down the bad), is of equal merit.
In short, Torment, what first set off the little spark for Bergman's career (and likely provided Sjoberg with one of his best films) is worth looking for, if at the least for Bergman fans wanting to check out alll of his films, but one may find it to be one of Bergman's most searing early works.
Flipping heck Tucker, Sir's got the hots for your bird ! - By: L. Davidson, 29 Jun 2006 "Torment" is an absorbing film based around an unlikely love triangle between a mild mannered & earnest schoolboy,Jan Erik, his Latin teacher & a depressive lush of a tobacconists shop assistant. The Latin teacher is a bit of a misanthropic bully & he is like a cross between Himmler & Mr Bronson from "Grange Hill". His bark is worse than his bite; maybe. The monochrome film is shot impressively & acted well by alll of the main characters involved . The love triangle ends in tragedy & classroom tensions spill over into the family & social life of Jan Erik. "Torment" is well paced , well acted & the picture & sound quality are excellent too.
