At a pre-war Austro-Hungarian boarding school, a pair of students torture one of their classmates, Basini, who has been hunted stealing money from one of the two. The two decide, instead of handing him over to the school authorities, to punish him themselves and to torture, degrade and humiliate him, with increasing sadistic delight. With each passing day, the two boys are able to justify more severe treatment than the one previously given. Torless is a passive member of the group, he observes and does not participate, but he frustrates the executioners only by analyzing their behavior ...
1966 German film directed by Volker Schlöndorff and starring Mathieu Carrière, Marian Seidowsky, Barbara Steele and Fred Dietz