From the Georg Buchner play (also adapted to Alban Bergs opera Wozzeck), Kinski is the put-upon soldier who supplements his privates pay as a guinea-pig for a nutritionist (who merrily foresees the asylum as the inevitable outcome of a diet of peas), and whose wife (Eva Mattes) has an affair with the dashing drum-major, much to the amusement of Woyzecks superior officers.
Like a tragic Buster Keaton, who hears the wind and earth telling him to avenge the infidelity, Kinski finds a truly piteous note in the midst of a stylised was a 19th century military town ever so clean? yet powerful drama. (The monkey gets to wear a military uniform.)