Woyzeck (1979)

User Rating:

7.2/10   

Director:

Werner Herzog

Writers:

Georg Büchner (play) and
Werner Herzog (writer)

Release Date:

24 August 1979 (USA)

Genre:

Drama

Plot:

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

Plot Keywords:

Soldier | Despair | Adulterous Wife | Brutality | Based On Play

Awards:

3 wins & 1 nomination

Cast

Klaus Kinski	...	Friedrich Johann Franz Woyzeck
Eva Mattes	...	Marie
Wolfgang Reichmann	...	Captain
Willy Semmelrogge	...	Doctor
Josef Bierbichler	...	Drum Major
Paul Burian	...	Andres
Volker Prechtel	...	Handwerksbursche (as Volker Prechtl)
Dieter Augustin	...	Marktschreier
Irm Hermann	...	Margret
Wolfgang Bächler	...	Jew
Rosemarie Heinikel		(as Rosy-Rosy Heinikel)
Herbert Fux	...	Unteroffizier
Thomas Mettke
Maria Mettke

Directed by
Werner Herzog

Writing credits
Georg Büchner		(play)
Werner Herzog		writer

Produced by
Joschi Arpa	....	producer

Cinematography by
Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein

Film Editing by
Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus

Set Decoration by
Henning von Gierke

Costume Design by
Gisela Storch

Production Management
Walter Saxer	....	production manager

Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Mirko Tichacek	....	assistant director

Sound Department
Jean Fontaine	....	sound assistant
Harald Maury	....	sound

Camera and Electrical Department
Claude Chiarini	....	still photographer
Mike Gast	....	second cinematographer

Other crew
Anja Schmidt-Zäringer	....	continuity

Production Companies

• Werner Herzog Filmproduktion
• Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen (ZDF)

Distributors

• Europa Filmes (Brazil) (VHS)
• New Yorker Films (USA) (subtitled)
• Palace Video (1983) (UK) (VHS)
• Palace Video (1983) (UK) (video) (Betamax)
• Ripley's Home Video (2005) (Italy) (DVD)
• Umbrella Entertainment (2006) (Australia) (DVD)

Also Known As:

Werner Herzog's Woyzeck

Runtime:

Colombia:74 min | Hong Kong:81 min | USA:82 min

Country:

West Germany

Language:

German

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:PG | Finland:K-16

Filming Locations:

Telc, Czech Republic

Company:

Werner Herzog Filmproduktion

Trivia:

The entire 80-minute film was shot with only 27 cuts.

Goofs:

Continuity: Blood stains on Woyzeck's sleeve continuously change their extension and color from one scene to another.

Quotes:

Marie: [to her man during a fight] I'd rather have a knife in my body than your hand on me.

Movie Connections:

Version of Woyzeck (1968) (TV)

Nightmare schizo-comedy - Shakespeare a la Herzog

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.