Torment (Oxford Films) and A Cage of Nightingales (Lopert), both European films, tell in schoolboy terms of an old, bitter, incurable conflict: the free, self-responsible, self-governing spirit v. authority.
In Torment, made in Sweden, the central character is a fine-minded, troubled boy in his late teens (Alf Kjellin). The villain is a pathologically cruel Latin teacher (Stig Jarrel). The provocatress of disaster is a loose girl of the town (Mai Zetterling) with whom the boy becomes involved, partly through sexual infatuation. But he is also concerned over her terror of a pitiless lover whom she dares not name but who, it becomes...