Another in the impressive and growing "Ingmar Bergman Collection" from Tartan, Torment is unusual in that it is not directed by the man himself but is, instead, his first filmed screenplay. Instead those duties go to Alf Sjöberg, a well regarded director whose work (aside from this) is singularly unavailable in the UK, while one of the producers is another pillar of Swedish cinema, Victor Sjöström, whose work (aside from two very limited issue Redemption videos a decade ago) is also absent from UK shelves.Filmed in 1944, this film's parallels with the deranged sadism of World War II are all too apparent - allegedly the character of Caligula was meant to represent a Grammar school Himmler. Set in a school whose marble arches and criss-crossing stairways resemble an Escher print come to life, Torment tells the story of Jan-Erik Widgrin and his problems with Latin classes. It's not so much the language that is the cause of his torment (though the constant hunting for obscure grammatical tenses makes the classroom seem like a straight-faced version of Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979) - and just as scary) but rather the teacher: the youngish, fascist-moustached nutcase Caligula.
Caligula's combination of rote-method teaching, heavy sarcasm and unbridled sadism make him quite clearly the least-liked teacher in the school - kids play truant just to avoid the dreaded "double Latin" on a Monday. He's nothing like the Mr Chips headmaster, all bushy white hair and Dumbledore sense of fairness. Widgrin has another problem though. He desperately wants a steady girlfriend to take home to mother but, via some cod-Nietzsche from his worldly pal Sandman, ends up befriending perpetual victim and person of questionable (though ultimately decent) morals Bertha, the assistant of the local tobacconist.
Bertha's need for vast quantities of brandy is a result of the undesirable attentions of a stalker/lover who forces her into acts of degradation and self-pity. The unspeakable cad eludes Widgrin for some time but it turns out to be someone closer to his world than he would like to think and the ultimate consequences are grave indeed...
Bergman's motifs are already apparent - the frank dialogue (for the time) and little doubt over allusions to sexual violence, the appearance of a psychiatrist (here arguing that sometimes lethargy is the best defence of youth), love triangles, women fallen from grace, the power of dreams, allusions to philosophy and so on. It is also, naturally, unremittingly bleak at times, although there is a degree of redemptive hope by the end.
The film's basic message is that abused, psychologically scarred people become abusers, wallowing in self-pity and instigating cruelties to make up for their own psychological inadequacies. Caligula constantly swings his moods from obsequious to violently psychotic, from calculated psychological cruelty to introspection about his own wretchedness ("I still am very ill" he is wont to say in his defence) - moods that end in death and potential ruin for those who cross his path. Bertha, the abused, relies on Widgrin as an emotional crutch but she is unaware as to the extent that his fate runs parallel to hers.
Sjöberg films proceed in a more stylised manner than the claustrophobic compositions of Bergman, even finding time for some Nosferatu (1922) style menacing shadows as the unseen Caligula makes his mark on the doomed lover, his shadowy hand grasping Bertha's neck from afar. Sjöberg is similarly fond of analogies and symbols; Bertha's bed is surrounded by pictures of the seven dwarves, her position as the film's Snow White also mirrored in Widgrins' poison dripping pen dream.
For a first screenplay it is easy to see how Bergman was quickly elevated to writer-director; it's tightly written and inherently modern in tone. More intriguing perhaps is that it proves that Swedish cinema does not begin and end with Bergman; the film provides an all too brief glimpse of the potential of other directors who really should be seen. Perhaps the time is right for a retrospective of Sjöberg and Sjöström's work so that we can see Swedish cinema in a broader context than its one famous export.
Reviewed by Colin Odell & Michelle le Blanc
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