Filmseminar Werner Herzog: "Woyzeck"

A small garrison town in the middle of the 19th century. Woyzeck serves a captain as a boy and a doctor for medical nutrition experiments - with the little money he has, he tries to feed his lover Marie and her illegitimate child. But she cheats on him with a major, Woyzeck hears voices, he is jealous and desperate...

Werner Herzog sticks closely to Büchner's drama fragment, which in turn is based on a real murder case. He began filming in Telč, Czech Republic, just a few days after his NOSFERATU adaptation in order to creatively utilize the exhaustion of his actor Kinski after the previous, large-scale production. He creates a stylized atmosphere of spiritual and social decay - and Kinski plays the lead role in a withdrawn and vulnerable way that you wouldn't expect from him. "You almost want to believe that Herzog wanted to prove to himself that he can work without over-pressure, without compulsive gigantomania. After all, the ghostly calm of this film, the silent movie-like simplicity with which Woyzeck's tragedy unfolds, does more justice to Georg Büchner's angry drama than any expressive mummery." (Die Zeit, 1979)