This is a post that's been a long time coming, a look at the classic
Werner Herzog/
Klaus Kinski collaborations, already famous, but really put on the map for modern audiences by Anchor Bay's famous Herzog Kinski DVD boxed set in 2004. It's been requested and at the top of my list for a long time, but I've been quietly putting it off because I knew it wouldn't really be worthwhile unless I had the UK
Werner Herzog blu-ray Collection to compare the US releases to. Well, now I've finally secured a copy, so here we go! I've also gone ahead and updated my coverage of
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, to include the BFI blu of that film to the comparisons.
Update 1/20/19 - 5/4/26: Werner Herzog has entered the realm of 4k! Klaus Kinski has already has a bunch of his films released on UHD (
Venom,
Justine...
surely some others), but
Aguirre, The Wraith of God and
Nosferatu here are Herzog's firsts. A little
technical snafu slowed me down for a minute there, but nothing can stop
Update Megaweek!
We start off in 1972 with what many consider to be not only the best of
Herzog and Kinski's collaborations, but the best film either of them
have made in their entire careers. Kinski plays the titular
conquistador, Aguirre (in fact, he plays the title role in all of their
films together) who winds up leading a large party of Spanish explorers
on a mad journey through the Amazon in search of a lost city of gold.
What makes this film such a success is that so many elements are
operating in rare form all at once. You've got Kinski, of course, who
inhabits the role in a both over the top yet authentic way. And his
performance is housed within this wild documentary-like experience
captured by Herzog leading his cast and crew through the actual jungle.
You can feel how much of the characters' struggle is real life
experience being captured on camera. And then it's all set to the music
of
Popol Vuh, who's always been of Herzog's super secret
weapons, but here tops even most of his other scores, again placing the
viewer completely in this deadly voyage.
 |
1) 2004 AB DVD; 2) 2014 SF BD; 3) 2014 BFI BD;
4) 2024 SF BD; 5) 2024 SF UHD. |
The jump from DVD to blu is big in all of these, but it's the biggest here because, disappointingly, Anchor Bay's DVD of
Aguirre was
interlaced. This was a pretty high-profile, fancy boxed set, so even
in 2004, that was a little shoddy. Fortunately, none of the other films
in their set have this issue. Anyway, we can put that frustration
happily in the past now, because we have much better HD releases now. All
editions retain the original, fullscreen 1.33:1 aspect ratio, though the
2014 blu-rays do zoom out a tiny extra bit, and frame the image slightly
lower. The 2024 discs readjust the framing again, a tad even lower than that. The initial Shout and BFI blus seem to share the same master, which has
decidedly cooler color timing than the DVD. It's a step forward,
since the old timing seems to have a flat, brownish hue to the whole
image.
The difference between the 2014 blus is marginal, with BFI's disc
pushing slightly redder and it's blacks are very slightly deeper.
Because it's going to come up later, I'll just say explicitly that there
doesn't seem to be any black crush on any of these discs. The color timing is still in the same ballpark for the 2024 release, but even on the BD, it's a little more vivid. But where the latest release really shines is the resolution and encode. Even on the blu-ray, film grain is captured and retained much better than either previous release. It's a really satisfying improvement for those inclined to notice such things.
All the releases offer roughly the same audio and language options, with
a newer German 5.1 mix, plus the original mono tracks in both English
and German. And they all include optional English subtitles, even the
DVD. Of course, the blus and UHD feature uncompressed tracks, with Shout in
DTS-HD and BFI in LPCM for the monos and DTS-HD for the 5.1.
All of the discs include the one main special feature, an audio commentary with Herzog and moderator
Norman Hill.
They did commentaries for a lot of Herzog's films together, and if
you've never heard them, they're pretty terrific: very informative,
engaging, and with no lulls or lost focus. Besides that, each disc
includes the trailer, and the blus also include a stills gallery. But
here's where Shout really sets itself apart, on both their 2014 and 2024 releases: they include a second audio
commentary with Herzog and moderator
Laurens Straub. Yes, the
two commentaries are often redundant and repeat many of the same
anecdotes, but there are also enough unique bits to make it worth
listening to both for more serious fans. The 2024 set comes in a slipcover.
Seven years later, Kinski and Herzog reunited for the second feature, a
remake of the classic German expressionistic silent film,
Nosferatu. For the most part, they stick pretty close to the original, and
Stoker's
story, but when they do deviate, it's delightful. Where Herzog
delivered shockingly authentic adventure in their previous effort, this
entry is all about mood. And we see a very different Kinski here,
giving a very subtle and controlled performance in almost complete
opposition of how we saw him in Aguirre. In fact, one of the things
that makes these series of films is so much fun is that while Kinski is
so distinctive and utterly himself on the one hand, we're also getting
five very different sides of him in each film. Each role is an exciting
discovery.
Now, before we get into the comparisons, there's one more thing we have
to cover: the two versions of this film. Both the blu-ray sets include
the German and English versions of
Nosferatu. The DVD set only includes the German. Because of that, I've got Anchor Bay's 2002 separate DVD release of
Nosferatu[pictured, left],
which included both versions of the film. This is important to
distinguish because we're not just talking about two different dubs.
Herzog actually shot different takes of every dialogue scene, with the
actors speaking in English and German, and created two nearly identical
films with mostly unique footage. With that said, though, exterior and
silent shots, that don't feature any dialogue, are the same. So below,
you'll notice two very similar but un-matching shots of Nosferatu
reaching out to Harker. That's not because I mismatched the frames -
they can't match because they're two different takes. But then the
second set of shots, with Harker and the gypsies, are identical, because
both versions of the film used the same shot.
So, here is the English version...
 |
| 1) 2002 AB DVD; 2) 2014 SF BD; 3) 2014 BFI BD; 4) 2025 SF BD; 5) 2025 SF UHD. |
...And here is the German version.
 |
1) 2002 AB DVD; 2) 2004 AB DVD; 3) 2014 SF BD;
4) 2014 BFI BD; 5) 2025 SF BD; 6) 2025 SF UHD. |
And now, here's a genuinely matching shot across both versions and all releases.
 |
1) 2002 AB DVD (English); 2) 2002 AB DVD (German); 3) 2004 AB DVD (German);
4) 2014 SF BD (English); 5) 2014 SF BD (German); 6) 2014 BFI BD (English);
7) 2014 BFI BD (German); 8) 2025 SF BD (English); 9) 2025 SF BD (German);
10) 2025 SF UHD (English); 11) 2025 SF UHD (German). |
The differences between the English and German versions, in terms of PQ
at least, are nominal. But between the different releases, things are
definitely different. Let's start with the aspect ratio. The DVD is
slightly window-boxed to 1.80:1, an aspect ratio which is corrected by
all three blus and the UHD to 1.85:1. Again, there's no interlacing anymore, but there
sure is a lot of noisy compression on the DVDs, which is happily cleaned
up for the HD releases. But it's a little too cleaned up on Shout's 2014 disc.
Look how smooth everything is. Compare that to the BFI, where we see
natural, if light, film grain throughout the image. Shout definitely
did some tinkering to polish their 2014 image. It doesn't look terrible, or as
distracting as it is on
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, but it
isn't as faithful or naturally filmic.
Heck, the BFI disc actually has more grain than the 2025 Shout blu, too; though it's better matched by the UHD. All three (the BFI blu and the 2025 discs) resolve edges and small detail better. Also, it isn't too distracting,
but there is some black crush on the initial Shout blu, where details in the
heavy shadows which are visible on the BFI and 2025 discs are erased on Shout's 2014. Both 2025 discs have a subtler, slightly warmer color palette, and their new scan introduces a micro-sliver of additional picture along the outer edges. Honestly, I could see fans making a case for BFI's 2014 blu over Shout's 2025 blu as much as the other way around. It's a judgement call with pros and cons either way. But Shout's UHD, though not as markedly superior as their
Aguirre was, is the clear winner regardless.
And I guess here's where I should bring up the fact that BFI also released a UHD of this film in 2025. Given how their dueling 2014 blus bore out, you might expect their UHD to be superior, too. That's the one I initially planned to buy, personally. But news got out that it has a unique problem. Their 4k utilized some kind of motion smoothing AI technology in their transfer. Disappointing screenshots went a little bit viral online (
here are just a couple links). Apparently the German company that possesses the negatives did the 4k scan did this, and BFI didn't have the budget to redo the transfer, so they had to accept what was given. Fortunately, Shout
did pay for their own version. So yes, Shout's UHD really is the winner.
But back to the discs on hand... naturally, the German version has German audio, in both the original
mono and a newer 5.1 mix, and the English has English audio, in mono
only. Across the board. Shout bumps the audio up to DTS-HD (on all
three of their discs), and BFI
has the 5.1 in DTS-HD and the monos in LPCM. All of the versions have
removable English subtitles on the German versions, but only the Shout
discs (yes, to be clear, all three) also have optional English subtitles
for the English version.
Special features-wise, it's a pretty similar situation to
Aguirre,
except every release also includes a neat little making of featurette.
It's only about fifteen minutes, but gives a great peek
behind-the-scenes. Otherwise, they all have trailers and another audio
commentary with Herzog and Hill, while again Shout steps ahead of the
pack with a second Herzog and Straub commentary (on their 2014 and 2025 releases). Again, both
commentaries are great, but casual fans won't need both. The blu-rays
and UHD set also have an additional stills gallery. The 2024 set comes in a slipcover.
That same year, immediately after
Nosferatu, Herzog called Kinski back for
Woyzeck,
an adaptation of a famously unfinished German play from the 1800s.
Here we meet a very meek, submissive Kinski; a working class man who's
pushed around by his community, and ultimately becomes the agent of a
tragic crime. The broad melodrama of the play makes this film maybe a
little less compelling than the previous films, but it's still a very
effective crime story with some fascinating subtext, plus Kinski finds
an excellent co-star in
Eva Mattes, who fans would remember from
Stroszek.
 |
| 1) 2004 AB DVD; 2) 2014 SF BD; 3) 2014 BFI BD. |
The film is pillar-boxed to 1.66:1 across the board, but the blu-rays
pull out to find a little extra information along all four sides.
Interesting is the shift in color timing to be slightly less natural,
but instead embrace the dusty yellow tones of the location. Grain and
detail on the blus are pretty close, but I'd give the slight edge to BFI
again. Speaking of "again," we have a little more black crush going
on, though in this case it's very slight, in part perhaps because the
film has less deeply dark scenes, but also because Shout handles them a
bit better this time. Like, in this case, I really had to closely look
at screenshots to see if I could spot any detail that was dropped,
whereas the swaths of empty blackness in
Enigma were distracting to witness during my initial viewing.
This film only comes in German mono with removable English subs no
matter which disc you choose, though the blus are lossless DTS-HD
(Shout) or LPCM (BFI).
There are no audio commentaries this time, which is disappointing. The
DVD is completely barebones apart from the trailer, and BFI only adds a
stills gallery. But Shout steps ahead once again with an hour-long
audio-only interview with Herzog and Straub. It's essentially a
mini-audio commentary, focused entirely on
Woyzeck, that plays
over a single still image. It's about as good as the other audio
commentaries, though being stuck staring at a single frozen image for an
hour is a little dry. The Shout blu has a nice, half-hour doc called
Portrait: Werner Herzog. In turn, the BFI set has a roughly hour long doc called
The South Bank Show: Werner Herzog, which runs an hour in length. They share so much footage in common, that you can essentially describe
Portrait as an abridged version of
The South Bank Show. But there's some compelling stuff that
Portrait lost, including Herzog describing an early memory that inspired a scene in
Heart of Glass
and an interview with Herzog's first wife, as well as lighter stuff,
like Herzog training with his soccer team. And there is a tiny bit
exclusive to
Portrait, too.
And for now, I think I'll wrap this half up. Join me tomorrow for
Herzog/ Kinski, Part 2, where we'll look at the other three Herzog/ Kinski films, and even a related Criterion release. TTFN.
