Torment takes us into the claustrophobic world of a prepschool student(Alf Kjellin) in his first encounters with evil. Terrorized by asadistic schoolmaster, he becomes involved with a shopgirl (MaiZetterling) who is also mysteriously threatened by a figure whom sherefuses to name. The film chronicles the couple's pathetic attempt tohide from evil in love. Ingmar Bergman's first produced screenplay was adevastating portrait of a schoolteacher he loathed in his youth, but, asBergman said, Sjöberg "transformed it into anightmare"-one relevant to the times, bringing into cinematic playthe nuances of a totalitarian environment along with his concern for theindividual in that environment. Bergman: "He made Caligula, theLatin master, into a crypto-Nazi and brought home the point that theactor Stig Jä;rrel should be blond and insignificant, not (dark) anddiabolical°.Sjöberg and Jä;rrel gave the character innerpressure, which in the end became decisive for the whole movie."