The Greatest Movie...

... with one of the my newly favorite

opening credits sequences ever?

Woyzeck (1979)

There are lots of opening credits sequences that've blown my tiny mind through the years - from the relative simplicity of Vertigo's, with the names moving around a woman's face before descending into Saul Bass' maddeningly designed spirals to something more recent and tech-heavy like, say, the ones for Spider-Man (don't know why I always remember these ones but I loved Raimi's slide-down-the-spiderweb feeling to them) - but I can't say I've ever enjoyed any as much as the ones for Woyzeck, Werner Herzog's 1979 film starring Klaus Kinski and Klaus Kinski's insane face. I watched these credits three times in a row. And it's just his face. Bless his crazy face and bless Herzog for finding it as captivating as I do and capturing it so wonderfully every chance he got. Cinema is all the richer for it.

This is another film I watched this weekend alongside Dreyer's Day of Wrath that's fueled my "The world needs to watch these movies!" kick of today. Woyzeck is one of Herzog's slightly more obscure films but it has no reason to be, it's as weird and funny and horrifying as anything he's ever done. And it's really beautiful in a dumpy and sad sort of way; here are some screencaps:

Not to mention that image from today's banner up there at the top of the blog.


I would worry that that image is too spoilery to just toss around without warning if I hadn't discovered that it's been used for half of the marketing materials for the film. In the end I don't think it ruins anything going into the film knowing what's coming; the whole film kind of rides on a crest of buried and building trauma anyway. You know what's coming. You can't stop what's coming.

So yeah. I command all of you to watch Woyzeck. It's a keeper.
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