At an Austrian boys’ boarding school in the early 1900s, shy, intelligent Törless observes the sadistic behavior of his fellow students, doing nothing to help a victimized classmate—until the torture…

Volker Schlöndorff transposes Bertolt Brecht’s late-expressionist work to latter-day 1969. Poet and anarchist Baal lives in an attic and reads his poems to cab drivers. At first feted and later…