Torment

"Torment" (Hets, 1944) is a Swedish school drama you can watch online on iFILM. The screenplay was written by Ingmar Bergman — his debut as a writer, before he directed a single film of his own — with Alf Sjöberg behind the camera. Student Jan-Erik Widgren falls for Bertha, a young woman working at a tobacco shop who lives in a state of constant dread.

That dread has a source: a Latin teacher the students call Caligula. Stig Järrel plays the sadistic disciplinarian with barely restrained menace; Alf Kjellin is Jan-Erik, and Mai Zetterling is Bertha. The cast also includes a young Gunnar Björnstrand, who would later become one of Bergman's most trusted actors. Caligula reserves his cruelest behaviour for Bertha, and what starts as classroom bullying moves into darker territory fast.

The film screened at Cannes 1946, where it picked up the prize for best debut and brought Bergman's name to international attention. For Swedish wartime cinema it was strikingly direct about cruelty and institutional power — a thread Bergman spent decades pulling. Watch "Torment" (1944) online on iFILM.