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 [...]