Woyzeck two

We watched our new DVD of Woyzeck last night, the DVD of the film produced by Herzog and starring Kinski, among others. A film which might be encapsulated as an arty costume drama set in a German garrison town, on a large river, in the middle of the nineteenth century.

Also by saying that I am swinging in behind the donnish lady of reference 1. The Old Vic adaptation might have taken the bones of the original story, but that was about all. A 'West Side Story' to 'Romeo and Juliet', without achieving the power of either.

In the film, Woyzeck is an old sweat. An older, long service man who had not risen above private, and presumably apt to be shoved into all sorts of odd jobs which younger men, better able to cope with extended drill in full kit, would disdain. From the point of view of the ladies of the garrison town, a bit of a failure. But maybe steady, and good enough for a meal ticket. To my mind an important change from the play.

Both Woyzeck and the captain are prone to philosophising, in both the film and the play. In the case of the former, brought on, at least in part, by the bizarre diet imposed by the doctor - another character who appears in a much more rounded version in the film than in the play. With the philosophising in the film being both more interesting and more plausible that than in the play.

A more satisfactory ending, with a frenzied stabbing of his wife, by a shallow lake out in the woods, and his just wandering off. We don't know what happens to him. And the film actually closes with a nice touch of black humour, one of a number scattered along the way, which I leave as a surprise to those readers who have not already watched it. The play did include humour, often coarse, but did not rise to the level of Herzog's delicately executed black humour.

Oddly, Woyzeck's common law wife in the film reminded me of the wife in the play, in a way that the other members of the ensemble did not. An ensemble of about a dozen in the play and about the same number, but not necessarily in the same roles, in the film. In both cases, rather good, but film version was better. A much stronger sense of a poor, but attractive girl, making the best she could of things in a world which could handle both women and the poor rather roughly.

All in all, the film was a much more substantial affair than the play, while managing without excess of language or flesh. The donnish lady was right.

Next stop, the unfinished play itself, sitting ready to go on the kindle.

PS: there is also a 1995 film, but I am not going as far as the £25 or so which seems to be required. On the other hand, I learn that the same Herzog/Kinski team also did Fitzcarraldo, which we may still have, in which case we will give it another go

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/woyzeck.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woyzeck_(1979_film).