Presented tonight in conjunction with the San Francisco Opera's performance of Berg's opera “Wozzeck,” Herzog's drama of an ordinary man driven mad by the everyday militarism of his world is based on the same source as the opera, an extraordinary, unfinished work by Georg Büchner. “Written in 1836, just before its author's death at age 23, Georg Büchner's drama fragment anticipates by some 50 to 100 years such literary movements as Naturalism, Expressionism, the Theater of Cruelty, and the Theater of the Absurd.... (I)n Werner Herzog, the play has found its ideal interpreter.... (H)is film of ‘Woyzeck' has none of the mannerisms we usually associate with Expressionism. It is a film without shadows. This caustic tragedy of (a) man's headlong plunge into madness and murder is filmed with a terrible clarity, punctuated by bursts of unexpected and devastating lyricism. In the title role, Klaus Kinski, whose...collaborations with Herzog include the conquistador Aguirre and the vampire Nosferatu, delivers a harrowing and unforgettable performance, as stark and unsentimental as the razor with which the hero carries out his chilling destiny.” --New Yorker Films