User reviews

Woyzeck is Werner Herzog's only ever adaptation of a stage play. There are always problems in the transition of a play from stage to screen. The theatre relies on the power of words and performances, whereas cinema is built more upon images and set pieces. Herzog, an unconventional yet adaptable director, handles the conversion well, giving it a cinematic presentation while still retaining the integrity of the source material.

Buchner's play is a strong story, albeit incredibly grim and depressing. Klaus Kinski, as the title character, is driven insane by military routine and scientific over-analysis, and apparently the role had an irreversible effect on the already psychologically unstable actor. It's typical Herzog material, looking at insanity, dehumanisation and people driven to extremes. Also, like his previous picture Nosferatu, it is another link between the German New Wave and the German Expressionist movement of the 1920s, as it shares that movement's obsessions with psychological analysis and social entrapment.

In filming Woyzeck, Herzog creates an unusual mixture of obviously real locations and rather static, theatrical direction, with few cuts or camera moves. In typical Herzog style there is an unnerving quietness and tranquillity. He isn't afraid to flaunt the advantages of the cinematic medium over the theatrical, with some beautiful landscape shots, and Kinski darting about in and out of close-up and stepping into shot from behind the camera – an effect impossible on the stage. The climactic murder scene is also very well done, and here the picture is at its most openly cinematic.

Kinski is clearly very deep in his performance, and its no wonder the material had such an impact on him. It's a pity, but he is ideal for the role. It's hard to imagine anyone else bringing that much intensity and realism to the part. Really, these collaborations between him and Herzog are the best examples of his unique acting talent because they were, as far as I know, the only opportunities he had to play lead roles. Also worth a mention here are the excellent supporting performances from Eva Mattes and Josef Bierbichler, European actors who deserve far more recognition.

Because of its theatrical origins Woyzeck is perhaps the one Herzog film in which the narrative takes precedence over the look of the thing. On the one hand, this is a good thing because it is much more focused and doesn't digress as his pictures tend to. But for me it also makes it a weaker entry in his filmography, because his films generally rely on their powerful imagery. Still, it is watchable, short and sweet, with some interesting moments.

I will put the bottom line at the top so you can decide whether to bother reading on (and seeing this film).

This is certainly not a film for everybody. If you find the following review annoying, and you feel as if you wasted time reading it - BY ALL MEANS - avoid seeing this film, you simply won't enjoy it.

Another Herzog-Kinski masterwork, Woyzeck is one of the weirdest films of the 1970s. I do not use the word "weird" very often, but it is so appropriate for this film that an endless string of adjectives, adverbs and modifiers I would need to replace it seem thoroughly inadequate. Despite the vast and deep power and beauty of this film, I don't want to label it "good". Unlike some of the less surreal Herzog-Kinski collaborations, the amount of attention you pay to this film does not necessarily correspond to the amount of sense you will be able to make of it. Mostly, I think it's a film about psychosis - both personal psychosis (Woyzeck himself) and social psychosis (Woyzeck's miserable treatment at the hands of virtually everybody around him in his back-water town in Nazi occupied Poland).

For the first half of the film you will feel as if you are playing a VERY serious version of Monty Python's "Spot the Loonie." But, in this case, you are looking for the HEAD LOONIE in a whole melange of maniacs. The string of soliloquies which eventually leads to the climactic ending, hearkens back to Shakespearean tragedies, but until the very end, you don't necessarily know whether to think of this film as a comedy or the very dark and sinister tragedy that it seems to be. Even after the film exposes itself so dramatically in the end, I am still inclined to see it as a very deranged bit of comedy as much as anything else. Such is the beauty of Herzog's artistic method - nothing is straightforward, much is hideous and beautiful, and in a peculiar metaphysical and aesthetic sense, it all makes perfect sense.

Klaus Kinski gives a signature performance and the rest of the cast, though excellent, is barely noticeable with Kinski's intensity in the foreground. Though less accessible than many of Kinski's more popular works (Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo, Nosferatu), this is nevertheless a unique and brilliant blend of one of the greatest actor-director teams of all time.

I seriously need to re-watch *all* of Herzog's films, but in the flicker of memory this is my favorite.

For me, the static camera-work fits the hothouse atmosphere of Buchner's play perfectly. I think especially of the early scene where Woyzeck is shaving the Captain, and the camera doesn't move *at all* for what seems like forever ... technically, it is reminiscent of some of Jim Jarmusch's early films where the camera is hilariously static. Here, it is horrifyingly static.

And Kinski has never been more possessed, more demonically almost out of control. I just can't watch him, particularly during the intense (slow motion!) climactic sequence, and then "come back" to Hollywood movies and watch ... well, say, Kevin Costner. Sorry. Guess I'm a snob.

Finally, the strange, sawing music just sends me over the top every time, my skin tingling. To me this is an absolutely unforgettable, brilliant film experience. It disturbs the living hell out of me, and I like that.

Made the same year as the peerless 'Nosferatu the Vampyre', 'Woyzeck' again brings together the mighty partnership of Klaus Kinski and Director Werner Herzog. Whereas Kinski's portrayal of the vampire remains a highpoint of understated power, here his intensity hits overdrive and crosses the blurred line between insanity and over-acting.

The story is a deceptively simple one. Woyzeck is a soldier who is forced to take menial jobs and perform degrading experiments in order to feed his family. This leads to his mental breakdown, which results in a shocking act at the film's climax. As he loses his mind, you can believe in him totally, but that is partly because his frantic movements and extreme facial expressions indicate the grip of his senses is fragile to begin with. In true Herzog style, the film drinks up the main character's flaws and falls from (lowly) grace without spectacle or glamour.

Although the relationship between director and leading man was always fractious, co-star Eva Mattes as Marie has always spoken fondly of Kinski and their time working together.

The film is typically bleak but compelling. My score is 7 out of 10.

Based on the play by Georg Buchner about Franz Woyzeck : Klaus Kinski as an unfortunate and hopeless soldier . Mired in the ranks of the Germany Army he finds alone and powerless against a ruthless society and a rigid military authority that exploits him , as well as being harassed by his superiors and tortured in bizarre scientific experiments . Tormented by rare visions and weird voices , betrayed by his wife : Eva Mattes , in public by the unbearable weight of social and sexual oppression , he is increasingly pushed to the edge .

Chilling and sad portrayal of a man plunging into insanity when he is assaulted from all sides by forces he can not control , being caught between the cruel command , poverty and his distant wife . Werner Herzog's film is based upon a prestigious play dealing with a very strange , mysterious and bizarre character , gradually devolving into maniac instinct . Not the same dizzy folly as Aguirre , but Herzog´s similarly long perspective conjures as a brooding and thought-provoking film of man's aimless tracks throughout an egoistic society and harsh vision of human suffering beyond despair , eventually cracking when he discovers his wife's infedility . Here there are echoes of prestigious authors as Shakespeare , Beltor Bretch , Samuel Beckett , among others . Klaus Kinski gives a portentous interpretation in the title role as the hapless soldier who snaps when he learns his wife is having an affair. Along with Eva Mattes who is pretty well too , as his unfaithful spouse .

The motion picture was competently directed by Werner Herzog, though some may find hard to take . This great German director Herzog has made several thoughtful , provoking and interesting films , such as : "Fata Morgana" , "Aguirre Wrath of God" , "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser", "Heart of Glass" , "Stroszek", "Woyzeck" , "Nosferatu the Vampire", "Where the Green Ants Dream" , "Cobra Verde" ,"Lessons in Darkness", "My Dearest Enemy", "Invincible" , "The White Diamond", "Grizzly Man", "Rescue Dawn" , among others. Rating : 7/10 above average and irresistible movie thanks to Kiski's extraordinary performance . The flick will appeal to Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski followers.

Sadly it was only when looking this up after seeing it, and noting that it was an adaptation of an unfinished play, that Woyzeck made any sort of sense to me. It feels very empty and skeletal, which lends it a haunting ambience not really backed up by depth of plot. Kinski, playing a gaunt and penniless soldier driven mad by a diet of exclusively peas, is the central character here but plenty of others pop up and soliloquise at random. The ending seems unclear, the reasoning and purpose equally seem fairly opaque - all that's left in my mind are some picturesque images of the stunningly idiosyncratic Czech town of Telc where it was all filmed.

The Left Elbow Index considers seven specific elements of a film on a scale of 10 to 1, with 10 being highest, to help in deciding if a film is worth watching: acting, sets, dialogue, plot, character, continuity, and artistry. The acting in this film is superb and thereby rates a 10. Klaus Kinski is exceptional, so much so that it unlikely anyone else could do nearly as well in this role. He is simply stunning. In this regard, it is beyond Shakespearian. Werner Herzog, in his well publicized love-hate relation with Kinski, claims people like Brando are just kintergarten compared to Kinski--no faint praise, indeed. The sets is this film seem carefully planned and constructed. They are appropriate and uncontrived, whether indoors or out, therefore a 9. Dialogue rates a 10 in that it is at times appropriately ironic, profound, or normal. It all cases one listens to every word. The film is replete with dozens of unforgettable lines, like: "Death should be cheap but it should not be free" (by the pawnbroker selling the knife) and "When she got to the moon she found it was made of rotted wood" (by Marie). The Index believes that the plot is an 8, mostly because there seems to be some misleading action. Perhaps this is related to Woyzeck's mental state. It seems unlikely that a sane person could follow his trail. Character development rates a 10, whether related to major or to minor characters. Continuity (an 8) results in a consistent view of the action. For example, the role of the military, morality for the poor, the idea that the poor will work in heaven, and other ideas never escape the intellectual frame of the film. Consistent costuming lends to this. Herzog's background in history and the humanities certainly provides an easy 10 rating for artistry. His use of light and dark rivals that of the THE POTATO EATERS, the kitchen scene with Marie reminds one of GIRL SITTING BY THE WINDOW, and there are other traditional allusions. Herzog says he made the film in just eighteen days, and edited the cuts in just four days. He claims that is how it should be, that it was perfect. Perfect, of course, is an imperfect word. I'm not certain I would claim this film is perfect: however, it is exceptional enough for me to put it on my "see often" list. The Index gives it a 9.3---a bonus for dealing with the absurdity of human existence pushes it closer to a 10. I strongly recommend this film.

Franz Woyzeck (Klaus Kinski) is a hapless, hopeless soldier, alone and powerless in society, assaulted from all sides by forces he can not control.

Filming for "Woyzeck" in Telč, Czechoslovakia, began just five days after work on Herzog's "Nosferatu the Vampyre" had ended. Herzog used the same exhausted crew and star. The scenes were accomplished mostly in a single take, which allowed the filming to be completed in only 18 days; it was edited in just four. This does not surprise me in the slightest given the huge body of work that Herzog has put out.

This film really begins and ends with Klaus Kinski, one of the strangest actors who ever lived. In real life, he was a terrible person. But in many ways, this made him a great actor. He was never handsome, and always had crazy just beneath the surface. You could call him the German Jack Nicholson, bu it would be more accurate to call Nicholson a pale shade of Kinski. This may be his finest role, though for my taste I prefer such films as "Crawlspace".

Woyzeck is a private in the German army, struggling to maintain his sanity in a world that torments him at every step. Suspecting his wife of infidelity and abused both physically and mentally by his superiors, his problems come to a head in a shocking final act. Kinski is brilliant here as the disturbed soldier, as is Eva Mattes as his wife. There are a few scenes here that aren't brilliant, but this is a very good Herzog film.

7/10.

The picture on the film's IMDb page spoils a major plot point, so make of that what you will. Unfortunately, I saw it before I watched the film.

After loving nearly every minute of the previous Herzog-Kinski collaborations, I was excited to dig my teeth into this one since I had the DVD laying around.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be a step down in nearly every category.

It's based on a stage play, so naturally, it feels more staged than its predecessors, and thus, it felt visually lacking for the most part. Don't get me wrong, though, I admired the use of lighting and shadows in certain shots, and thought the general framing was quite good. But there was rarely a shot that caught my attention and made me go, "Wow, that's great", like in Nosferatu, where there are several amazing images - I revisited that film for the first time last night. I almost feel bad for revisiting Nosferatu in such close approximation as watching Woyzeck for the first time, because it only served to illuminate just how much worse the latter is.

Kinski's presence in Aguirre and Nosferatu was extremely powerful; unforgettable, dare I say. I couldn't take my eyes off him in those films. Here, he plays a character who may have sounded interesting on paper, but turned out to be, I don't want to say bland, as Kinski did a very good job playing Woyzeck, but it's just not a character I cared to witness in action for nearly an hour and a half. He's the type of character who's psychologically damaged and gets driven insane by everything he's witnessed in society, and most likely when he was in war, which we don't get to witness. We just know he's a soldier with severe mental problems, and we get to see how he goes about his day and behaves, which is in a very unusual way. He also has to deal with getting abused at his job, by his superiors, and having to deal with his wife having apparent sexual relations with other men.

Back to the ending. Although I knew it was coming, I still found it to be an affecting sequence, as the terrific combination of Kinski's facial expressions, slow-mo, music, and the sheer brutality of the act made it a sequence I won't soon forget. Even more impressive is the fact it was all done in one take. Kinski was completely in the moment, not once seeming to be distracted. In the moments after that, he continues to be great, as he acknowledges that his wife was a necessary sacrifice for him to be free. And we notice in the dancing scene that his wife's death took a huge load off of him. That doesn't last for long, though, as people notice the blood on him and start to become suspicious that he killed someone. Woyzeck goes back to the murder scene to try and wash the blood of his wife off of him, but realizing that such a cruel act could never simply be "erased" from memory, and that murder is truly in his nature, he seemingly hallucinates and then drowns in the pond right by his wife's dead body. The final shot is of his dead wife covered up and about to be put into a coffin, with apparently some words from the play up on the screen.

This has went on for too long, so I'm going to end this by saying that although this has become my least favorite feature length Herzog film, it had enough strengths for me to consider it above average, which says a lot about how much I admire Herzog as a director. Since I own it, it'll be easy for me to revisit the film when I feel like giving it a second chance, too.

For years, folks have gone practically insane extolling the virtues of the collaboration between director Werner Herzog and the actor Klaus Kinski. Their films such as "Aguirre: The Wrath of God" and "Fitzcarraldo" are favorites of many foreign film buffs. Well, I've seen these and other Herzog/Kinski collaborations and am not so enamored by them. However, of all their films, the one that I am most out of step about is "Woyzeck"--a film loved by some but which I thoroughly hated.

The film has very little in the way of plot. It's set in Germany in the 19th century and mostly consists of the lowly soldier Woyzeck (Kinski) being mistreated by everyone. His commanding officer treats him almost like a pet, the doctor does weird experiments on him, other soldiers beat him up and his wife cheats on him. This continues for the entire movie until the end, when Woyzech snaps. There really isn't much more to the story than this and I found it all very ponderous and about as interesting as watching a boil fester!

By the way, don't assume I am anti-Herzog. He's made many brilliant films (especially his documentaries) and he is the reason I saw this film in the first place.

One of Werner Herzog's most unrecognized films, Woyzeck is utterly brilliant.

Few films succeed at portraying frustration and madness as much as this. Among them are Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" and Lodge Kerrigan's "Clean Shaven"

Klaus Kinski's performance is so good that just watching him is tiring, and the viewer is left anticipating when he will finally snap. Few films stick with me as much as this one and the sped up opening sequence is one of the most memorable opening scenes of any film I've seen.

"Although a 50-year-old Kinski is incontrovertibly too old for Woyzeck, who, in Georg Büchner's play, is a military young man, but constantly seen hot and bothered, he really breaks a sweat to manifest the volcanic upheaval that seethes underneath, and this time, it is not egoism, bigotry or menace, but something masochistic, Woyzeck is a cipher, a pipsqueak, he cannot rival in brawn the drum major (Bierbichler), whom Marie fancies, rarely Kinski is seen so hapless, frantic in a piteous way, preoccupied with hallucinations and apocalyptic visions, even his movement is unnatural, also dissimilar from Dracula's tardy, calculated gait, Woyzeck doesn't walk but skulks about, hops at one's beck and call, a simian mimicry."

read my full review on my blog: Cinema Omnivore, thanks.

Werner Herzog's adaptation of Georg Büchner's classic play was filmed an d cut in 18 days, and the quick-shot production does show in the minimalist settings, but Klaus Kinski's intense, over-heated performance remains quite memorable.

This is not a spoiler as it reveals little more than what is included in the original trailer.

As "Beautiful a murder as you could hope for," remarks the Policeman in the final scene of Herzog's Woyzeck . And he is right. Herzog adaptation of Buchner's play is a triumph of cinema. While most "murder films" focus on plot and atmosphere rather than character (i.e. Hitchcock's Psycho), Woyzeck takes us slowly and elegantly into the protagonist's psyche in such a way that the final murder scene is an explosion of cinematic poetry. Herzog's rather faithful rendition of Buchner's play benefits from its adaptation the screen and gives up nearly nothing of the original theatrical performance. For example, in remaining faithful to the original text, the prolific amount of monologues gives us insight into the characters' internal state and makes every action more meaningful. The long speeches are refreshing after being overexposed the choppy interchange of half sentences that are characteristic of most contemporary screenplays. And yet Herzog's adaptation is not merely a filmed play.

The acting, directing and cinematography are beautifully coordinated. Kinsky's brilliant performance as Woyzeck makes us believe that there is no other actor that could pull off the role with such vigor and passion, and of course, in such a frighteningly convincing way. And of course Herzog's direction is strongly felt. And last but not least, most of the cinematography is gorgeous and beautifully framed. To be sure it is not a perfect film, there are some almost clumsy panning shots, and the film's rushed production is evident in the editing. This is why I give the film an 8. And yet this film will forever change the way you look at cinema.

I will not be doing so, but neither subtitles nor a literal understanding of the German language is necessary to appreciate this great "little" movie. As in his documentaries, Herzog displays an uncanny ability to transport the viewer into a setting in a way that conveys the often surreal experience one finds in real life itself without any artifice of production or staging. The use of music in a conspicuously sparing yet powerful and constructive way as a tool to drive both plot and emotion is a classic hallmark of Herzog's work that other directors would do well to employ instead of the modern tendency to add a complete musical background or pop music product placement throughout a film. Klaus Kinski's performance is nothing short of brilliant. His facial & bodily expression in this film could by itself be the material for an entire master class in acting. Every other character could have been substituted with stand-up cardboard cut-outs and their dialogue read by a narrator and Kinski would have made the film just as compelling. This is not a criticism in any way of the other acting performances in this film. It is simply a way of stating that Kinski's performance could have carried this as a one man show. I have read all of the other reviews and choose not to delve into plot or theme analysis other than to say that the film poses many of the basic existential questions regarding humanity. It is a film worth watching more than once, and is not one to be figured out or explained so much as to be used as a launching point for a discussion on the human condition as a whole. An absolute must watch for a serious film lover. All teenage and secondary school thespians should view this work.

I had previously seen Tom Waits version of Woyzeck in the theater which I love, read the novel, which is equally good. Watching this 'classic' was a disgrace to movie lovers across the globe. I found the film cheap and mainly bought it because of Kinski I must admit. He does a good job in this movie, which just ends out being dull and long (though it isn't that long!). The scenes are built up as if you sat in the theater - long shots from one side, only with few closeups now and then. It felt to me as a waste of time, as I had hoped to watch Woyzeck THE MOVIE, not another run of a theater play. If you like Kinski, watch the movie to see his grotesque faces, if not - leave it alone.