First film adaptation of Georg Büchner’s play, "Woyzeck"
Please RSVP
Intro and Q&A: Jason Doerre (in person)
While an anatomy seminar prepares to examine the cadaver of Franz Wozzeck in the name of scientific progress, medical student Büchner excoriates humanity for having allowed Wozzeck’s fate. The tragic story unfolds in flashbacks, as Büchner narrates.
This film is endowed with exceptional visual power—both sharply realistic and uncannily visionary. Georg C. Klaren used expressionist elements to explore German predispositions to militarism and fascism. Although officials praised this first postwar literary adaptation, it disappeared from public view following the formalism debate in the 1950s.
Director: Georg. C. Klaren
Germany 1947
101 min.
German with English subtitles
© Jason Doerre
Jason Doerre is a Visiting Assistant Professor of German Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, CT, and he worked as the DEFA Film Library’s Program Assistant from 2009-11 while completing his PhD at UMass Amherst. His research and teaching focus on nineteenth and twentieth century cultural history and film studies. Most recently, he has published on DEFA Film, Weimar Cinema and the literature of German author Hermann Sudermann. He is currently completing several projects, one of which is a manuscript that deals with pessimism and the liberal German intelligentsia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Back
