WOYZECK II – Klaus Kinski

Klaus Kinski in Woyzeck

WOYZECK Review: Part I
Written by Herzog, Woyzeck is an adaptation of an unfinished 1836 play by Georg Büchner (who died of typhus at twenty-three) that is reputedly based on a real murder of a military man’s lover. Until the turn of the twentieth century, Büchner and his play were all but forgotten, but the author was rediscovered when Modernism arose in the early part of the last century. Woyzeck was seen as a herald of both Modernism and Absurdism, with its lead character described as a sort of pre-Beckettian creation. Such interpretation is validated right in the first scene following the credits, as the camera, at faster-than-normal speed, shows an officer forcing Woyzeck to do squats [...]

WOYZECK d: Werner Herzog

Woyzeck (1979)
Direction: Werner Herzog
Screenplay: Werner Herzog; from a play by Georg Büchner
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Eva Mattes, Wolfgang Reichmann, Willy Semmelrogge, Josef Bierbichler, Paul Burian, Volker Prechtel
 

Klaus Kinski in Woyzeck
 

By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica:
One of the signs of a great artist is that even when not at the top of his game he is still capable of flashes of utter brilliance. Such is the case in Werner Herzog’s Woyzeck (1979), starring his friend and bane Klaus Kinski in the third of five films made by the director-actor team.
Woyzeck is not a great film, but here and there it offers great moments. Part of the reason it fails to reach true greatness is that the story’s stage roots are too [...]

OPERATION THUNDERBOLT – Klaus Kinski

Mivtsa Yonatan / Operation Thunderbolt (1977)
Director: Menahem Golan
Screenplay: Menahem Golan and Clarke Reynolds
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Yehoram Gaon, Sybil Danning, Assaf Dayan, Gila Almagor, Assaf Dayan, Mark Heath
 

 

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UNFASHIONABLE
Despite the complex and gripping real-life basis for Mivtsa Yonatan / Operation Thunderbolt — the 1976 hijacking of a Tel Aviv-Athens-Paris Air France flight — director-co-producer-co-scenarist Menahem Golan managed to make a film utterly devoid of suspense, depth, or intelligence. With its cheap look — despite full cooperation from the Israeli armed forces — subpar craftsmanship, and one-dimensional characters, Operation Thunderbolt is nothing more than your below-average 1970s movie-of-the-week. In fact, it is so mediocre that it earned an Academy Award nomination for best foreign-language film.
It all [...]