• 177.914 movies
  • 12.203 shows
  • 33.971 seasons
  • 646.886 actors
  • 9.370.105 votes
Avatar
Profile
 
banner banner

Woyzeck (1979)

Drama | 80 minutes
3,19 129 votes

Genre: Drama

Duration: 80 minuten

Country: West Germany

Directed by: Werner Herzog

Stars: Klaus Kinski, Eva Mattes and Wolfgang Reichmann

IMDb score: 7,0 (11.282)

Releasedate: 25 May 1979

Woyzeck plot

"Shame, vengeance, terror... love."

Everyone treats the well-meaning Franz Woyzeck like a toy: the army captain orders him at random, the doctor conducts experiments on him and gives him an extra bonus if he shows any sign of 'well-developed' schizophrenia, and furthermore has Woyzeck's wife once again has a crush on the drum major Woyzeck should have been. How long will it take for Woyzeck to go completely crazy with everything that's going on around him?

logo tmdbimagelogo tmdbimagelogo tmdbimagelogo tmdbimage
All Media

Trailer & other videos

Reviews & comments


avatar

Guest

  • messages
  • votes

Let op: In verband met copyright is het op MovieMeter.nl niet toegestaan om de inhoud van externe websites over te nemen, ook niet met bronvermelding. Je mag natuurlijk wel een link naar een externe pagina plaatsen, samen met je eigen beschrijving of eventueel de eerste alinea van de tekst. Je krijgt deze waarschuwing omdat het er op lijkt dat je een lange tekst hebt geplakt in je bericht.

* denotes required fields.

Pay attention! You cannot change your username afterwards.

* denotes required fields.
avatar van The One Ring

The One Ring

  • 29974 messages
  • 4109 votes

As far as I'm concerned, it was clearly a lesser collaboration between Kinski and Herzog. I have to admit that I couldn't really get into the film. The limited decor, the total lack of attention to camera work, the artificial dialogues, the exaggerated acting performances: everything felt unnatural and it was almost impossible to tell that it was a filmed play, even if it had been recorded on a stage. I don't dare say whether it would work for me in the theatre, but here I never got the feeling that I was looking at people or at something that should be taken seriously at all. Herzog had paid very little attention to how he would film the story, it seemed. The eccentric characters, some beautifully winged dialogues and even a brilliant monologue (that of Eva Mattes about a girl who travels to the moon and the sun) can't change that. Too fake for my taste and to be honest it came across as a less detailed Shakespeare in another time, but I don't know enough about the real play to know what is so brilliant about it. The film doesn't make it clear.

2*

dutch flagTranslated from Dutch · View original

avatar van eRCee

eRCee

  • 13441 messages
  • 1978 votes

Wow, what a load of rubbish. As JayLunar and The One Ring already say, it's all incredibly theatrical and artificial, both in terms of content and style (the lighting in particular is truly sad, you can just see the lights shining). The story of Woyzeck is of a shocking simplicity and the characters are not convincing for a moment. The same can be said of Kinski's acting, although I think he fills the role as it was written well (ergo: it depends on the role). In fact, there is simply nothing in the film that I liked. It is incomprehensible that this comes from a celebrated director.

dutch flagTranslated from Dutch · View original

avatar van JJ_D

JJ_D

  • 3815 messages
  • 1344 votes

Verily I say unto you: “Every man is an Abgrund…”

Klaus Kinski as the designated Woyzeck/Wozzeck? No room for disagreement! In a sleepy universe where captains drift on pseudo-existential musings, doctors dream of a scientific breakthrough based on a pea diet and the innocent mother hen Marie longs for a bit of ordinary male proximity, Woyzeck feels the approaching doom of a world that is slowly bursting at the seams, capsizing inaudibly, falling to pieces without leaving any visible traces. Ouch, how it hurts: that loneliness, that hopelessness, that emptiness…

Symbolically, Woyzeck falls prey to the same rhetoric of his fellow villagers, by destroying what is closest to him: his beloved. Then he is literally swallowed up by that indefinable force of nature that emanates from the elements. Drowning as the only possible salvation. No one sheds a tear... and in the meantime the village has gained another gossip. A corpse, therefore food for speculation, in short, liveliness... how cynical!

Werner Herzog portrays it all with a merciless meter. This 'Woyzeck' hardly sticks, because what is the opposite of the gray, hopeless, omnipresent ugliness? Nothing. Nothingness. Büchner would probably have rubbed his hands at such an evocation, but in 2025 the world and humanity need a different sound, I think.

2.5*

dutch flagTranslated from Dutch · View original