The great German director Werner Herzog and his muse, Klaus Kinski, marched through three films together in their peak years, 1978-82.
“Nosferatu the Vampyr” was a hit, and “Fitzcarraldo” was a career-defining epic for both director and star, an ordeal recognized, then and now, as a landmark of filmmaking megalomania and madness.
“Woyzek” was a small, inexpensive film tucked into the days just after production of “Nosferatu” wrapped. It was the quintessential “Cannes darling,” a movie celebrated at the film festival famous for its “groupthink” moments and breathless endorsements of movies that were never destined to thrive or even be heralded outside of the Cannes bubble.
“Woyzeck” can be appreciated today as Herzog’s “Rope” or “Psycho,” a minimalist parable with long takes and few edits, a filmmaking-on-the-cheap “experiment” from a filmmaker whose dreams were turning grandiose. The technical experiment doesn’t really pay off, although the long takes build tension as we subconsciously wait for a scene to pay off and an edit to release that scene and that tension.
But the story, adapted from the oft-staged and filmed play “fragment” by Georg Büchner, is simple to the point of simplistic, harsh and obvious and primitive and perhaps the least satisfying Herzog theatrical film of his earliest years.
A character portrait of a downtrodden, humiliated, under-promoted and unappreciated soldier in a 19th century provincial village, a man who descends into madness and murder over his lover’s infidelity, it’s appreciated as a near masterwork of German theatrical literature, one taught in German schools. In the hands of Herzog and a wild-eyed, foaming at the mouth performance by Kinski, it’s about as deep as a puddle and subtle as a cudgel.
The 40 year-old infantry private Woyzek (Kinski) is fast-marched into the frame as his introduction. His movements are played back in fast-motion, his face comically contorted with pain and fear.
Woyzek is disregarded by his captain (Wolfgang Reichmann), who has him shining his shoes and shaving him, a manservant in uniform. The local doctor (Willy Semmelrogge) has experiments in mind he might perform (for pay) on this lowest-of-the-low soldier on a dead-end career path.
The village doesn’t exactly shun Woyzeck. But he and his live-in-lover Marie (Eva Mattes) had a child out of wedlock, so they’re not blessed by the church.
As all the pressures of menial work, outsider status and assorted quack diet “experiments” by the doctor build up, Woyzeck realizes Marie is cheating on him with a handsome drum major (Josef Bierbichler). The private can’t even gain satisfaction from the man who is cuckolding him, as the drum major beats Woyzeck up when he’s accused.
This isn’t going to end happily.
The period detail is folk-tale perfect, but this narrative of oppression, revenge and madness plays out like an opera everyone in the audience can sing along with. It’s silent-cinema simple, with dialogue that rarely adds to our understanding of the obvious.
“I’d rather have a knife in my body than your hand on me,” Marie tells the father of her child (in German with English subtitles). That’s short enough to fit on a title card in the silent cinema, and foreshadowing at its most elementary.
Mattes doesn’t give much color to Marie, but still won Best Actress honors at the 1979 Cannes Film Festival. The “villains” here are bland archetypes.
But Kinski brings his usual savage commitment to this broken man fast-marching towards his doom.
With Büchner’s genius-who-died-young status in German letters, there’s debate about the plot turns “added” to this unfinished play and other ways it’s been edited, staged and filmed over the decades. Erring on the side of “logical” in determing the story’s course and outcome definitely renders “Woyzeck” less interesting than the madman-in-the-making that Kinski portrays.
Herzog somewhat downplays “Woyzeck” in his working-with-Kinksi documentary “My Best Fiend,” noting that Kinski was distracted and exhausted coming straight from “Nosferatu” to this role (they were filmed weeks apart) without mentioning that he himself was lurching from directing a demanding film to this far less demanding one.
One can appreciate the economy of budget and attempts at a new “style” that Herzog brought here. But unless you’re a count-the-27-edits obsessive, about the best one can say for this is he shot his “Rope” “Psycho” cheap and quick, and Kinski never disappoints.
And where is “Fitzcarraldo” streaming these days? There’s a tale of doom and madness worth sinking one’s teeth into.
Rating: unrated, violence, sexual situations
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Eva Mattes, Wolfgang Reichmann, Willy Semmelrogge and Josef Bierbichler’s
Credits: Scripted and directed by Werner Herzog, based on an unfinished play by Georg Büchner. A New Yorker Films release now on Tubi, other streamers.
Running time: 1:22
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