Customer Reviews

Even Dwarfs Started Small [VHS]

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

A revolution has gripped a remote village/prison/asylum inhabited entirely by dwarves. Inside a fenced compound, one dwarf holds another one hostage while the rest of the little people taunt the captor, threatening to destroy everything. Then the tiny barbarians at the gate gleefully run amok. They set flowers on fire, crucify monkeys, vandalize a car, and unsuccessfully attempt sexual relations. In the climax, the captor apparently kills the hostage (the action occurs off-screen) and then hurries away until he confronts a gnarled tree. He angrily accuses the tree of pointing at him. The last five minutes of the film show one of the revolutionaries cackling at a distraught camel.

Although the action can be described, the plot is not prominent; this film exists as a series of loosely connected scenes. These scenes are both hilarious and disturbing; often I found myself simultaneously amused, agitated, and confused. For example, the incessant, maniacal and high-pitched laughter that accompanies the havoc wrought by the Lilliputian horde is extremely unnerving yet engrossing.

Though this film is unlikely to be on any of those prevalent best-of-the-millennium lists, I believe that director Werner Herzog has created the celluloid equivalent of a Goya painting. If you are a devotee of the fringes of humanity and think that the cinema should be more than just simple narratives, definitely watch this astounding film.

I can't believe I hadn't seen or even heard about this insanely maniacal film for so many years. Although I've seen some of Herzog's later work with mixed reactions, EVEN DWARFS has made an undeniable and indelible mark on my brain. I thought it was going to be some stupid midget comedy (ala "Terror of Tiny Town"), but instead it's a raw, disturbing nightmare of a world gone mad....and every actor in it is a midget (or "little person"). Don't expect "Wizard of Oz" here, folks.... there are many stark images and an increasingly ominous mood throughout. Coupled with some scenes of mild animal abuse, you may want to keep your "little people" from watching this one. However, even with the sense of dread and psychosis, there is plenty of humor generated throughout from the cast of midgets who obviously gave their all. And Herzog's "real life" approach to filming makes his characters even more real -- they may look at the camera or react in real terror or laugh --- it's almost like Herzog has pulled us as viewers into his celluloid nightmare and we find ourselves reacting the same way as some of his cast are to the surrounding events. This is ultra-cinema.

Anchor Bay's DVD has a very enlightening commentary track by Herzog who clears up that the camel's knee ligaments were not severed for the film (the camel was not hurt in any way) and talks about how one of the midgets got run over and caught on fire during the shooting (he lived). He speaks about how stupid chickens are, too, and after you see the mouse scene with the stupid chicken walking back and forth a million times, you'll agree. Crazy actor Crispin Glover is also on the commentary track because apparently he was inspired by Herzog's film to make his own related upcoming "dwarfs" film (I can't wait).

EVEN DWARFS may not be for all tastes (if you find stuff like "Forrest Gump" entertaining - skip this one!). But, if you are MAD MAD MAD and like stuff like "Eraserhead" and "Gummo" - then check out these mad midgets. "Hehehehehehehheheehehehe"....

I saw this on the big screen at a sparsely attended $1-showing in a notoriously liberal college, and several viewers left before it was over, frustrated, confused, and perhaps even disturbed. The novelty of the all-dwarf cast will wear off quickly for almost everyone, and one must be nearly as strange as the film itself to sit through it all. That said, I'm glad I did. The others touch on Hombre, who steals the show, and I'll just mention that there's some really moving LOVE scenes in here too. There are also extended scenes of a car going around in circles, food fights, tormenting blind midgets, and a big dead sow. This movie won't let you love it, but one feels closed-minded in turning away.

This is a good film that is definitely something you WON'T see anywhere else. The imagery alone sets it apart -- a prison rebellion led by some rather vicious, and many times comical midgets, forces you to keep watching.

A really great performance by the midget Helmut Döring aka Hombre. Some parts will disturb you, some will leave you holding your ribs from the uncontrollable laughter (if you're into little people harassing other blind little people, hotwiring cars etc. hehe)

Definitely worth the watch because of its one-of-a-kindness.

I remember sitting in an old time theater with Udo Kier and several other film fanatics "somewhere" in the northwest (I don't remember what year it was though) on a ton of hallucinogenics and waiting for this movie to begin. I had no expectations other than a story that was told to me by (I think it was ) Kier. I have not checked the validity of this story, but I love the mythos of it. Someone can correct me if I am telling tall tales, but here's the gist of it:

Herr Herzog was apparently very ill in the late sixties and believed he would die. He wrote this screenplay in his hospital bed, a cathartic way to pass his last days away. Well...as we know, he didn't bite it, but he went on to direct this film with morbid determination. As the film progressed, a dwarf (maybe more than one) was injured during shooting. Werner, as an apology, gathered the cast together, brought them to top of a steep, thorned and thickety hillside, stripped down bare, and threw himself into the brambles. Bleeding and naked, he instructed everyone one to get back to work.

I thought to myself: That is rare dedication.

Then the film began. I don't really want to give anything away, but I've seen Herzog's other films and this one is his most mind bending, funny, and disturbing film. I swore off hallucinogens halfway through the film, realizing that they weren't necessary anymore, never to do them again. I've seen the film many, many times since (stone sober) and it's still as moving as the first time I saw it...and Hombre is a bona-fide amazing film persona. It's a avant garde cinema classic.

This is a very, very, very bizarre film indeed, there is not much I can add to that, it is funny( but, should it be? ) and it's very different to anything out there, if you want to enjoy an easier film with more dwarves than you have ever seen, running riot then watch "Under The Rainbow" !
But it is a very interesting film to say the least.

This perplexing, but very funny, film is like an "Our Gang" comedy, with dwarfs starring as insane asylum residents who run amok. I cannot tell you what the subtext is, and there is not much of a plot. The actors, all dwarfs, are very good and interesting. They were all very expressive and mesmerizing. I was struck when I watched it, how so very good-looking some of these actors/actresses were. Even those who didn't possess a conventional beauty were interesting and appealing.

Throughout the film, you hear them laugh: sometimes it is infectious, endearing; other times it is maniacal, obnoxious. Throughout the film, a strange lugubrious lamentation in Spanish is heard. Some of Herzog's motifs in this film: cannibalizing chickens, a dead, nursing sow, two blind dwarfs whose white sticks are taller than they are, and they use them as one would use sticks to break a pinata.

Towards the end of the film, the dwarfs become very excited and obsessed over the idea of burning plants which are in full bloom. The old truck goes around and around (as did the truck in "Stroczek", a five star, "must-see film"!) as many potted plants are doused with a flammable substance and set aflame.

This film is definitely worth seeing; I don't know that I really took anything away from it, other than I was entertained in a way that I had not been entertained before. It was not exploitive like "Freaks". The dwarfs were the stars of the show (only dwarfs in this movie) and treated with respect. You'll never see a movie like this again, and it has Werner Herzog's fingerprints all over it. I watched this from an inter-library loan, but I like it so much, I'm going to buy my own copy.

What more can you ask for in a film?

Werner Herzog's black and white 1970 film, Even Dwarfs Started Small (Auch Zwerge Haben Klein Angefangen) is one of those films that is beyond such grounded definitions as good and bad, and, like its American predecessor, Freaks, is simply one of the oddest films ever made. Bad critics have praised it for all the wrong reasons- such as being a statement on politics, the Vietnam War, the partition of Germany, against religion, and prudish ignorants have condemned it for similarly wrong reasons. Yet, few have ever watched it all the way through with unsparing eyes. It is a film that has a very sparse narrative structure, seeming improvisations, yet it is clearly not an early example of Postmodern preening, nor is it an amorphic surreal mess in the Warhol Factory mode. It is, however, like Freaks, neither as good nor bad as its greatest champions nor detractors claim it is. In fact, as one of the earliest films in the Herzog canon, made concurrently with the `documentaries' Fata Morgana and The Flying Doctors Of East Africa, it far more resembles such low budget 1960s black and white horror masterpieces as Herk Harvey's Carnival Of Souls, Francis Ford Coppola's Dementia 13, and George Romero's Night Of The Living Dead, or even the low budget 1960s films of American maverick filmmaker Sam Fuller. Yet, it is both a horror film and a black comedy.... Yet, the film, also written by Herzog, is not about rebellion, but weak anomy and enervation, for nothing is accomplished in the end, except mindless anarchism. The screenplay, such as it is, is virtually nonexistent, and, save for the soliloquies of the asylum boss, none of it matters, in terms of content. The film was shot on one of the Spanish Canary Islands, Lanzarote, which is a bleak volcanic wasteland, and mostly from the eye level of the dwarves, which adds to the monstrous feel that the `normal things' take on. That it only runs 96 minutes is a good choice, but if the film was only 70 or so minutes in length it would be even more effective. As it is, it as an oddball film that fits no categories, is beyond good and bad, yet also an early example of Herzog's continuing filmic war against the evil of nature- which Herzog sees as despairingly immanent. For the rest of us, the sights and sounds of the two sickest of the dwarves- Pepe and Hombre- laughing maniacally until they both seem ready to drop dead, is one of the most bizarre and powerful images recorded on film, as well as one of the scariest. It may not mean a damned thing, but it sure packs a wallop. Would that every film could say even that much.

Werner Herzog's second feature is set in Mexico and features a colony of dwarfs who revolt against their dictator. As Herzog later said, "it's a dark desperate sort of film," that he cobbled together with a cast of dwarfs and a stolen camera from a film school. The revolution features chaos and anarchy, dwarfs through bottles of wine at a moving truck, light things on fire, and kill farm animals all to the tune of serene African music. I have no clue what this film means, but it is undeniably intriguing, the kind of film one would expect from a doped-up tribe in the Amazon. See it for yourself.

Werner Herzogs EVEN DWARVES STARTED SMALL could be described to the uniniated as TERROR OF TINY TOWN crossed with RIOT IN CELL BLOCK FOUR. In this film inmates at a prison farm (or perhaps its a mental institution, the film is unclear) revolt, hold the head of the institution captive in his villa, and go around creating havoc and mayhem around the grounds of the institution. The warden (or what ever he is supposed to be) is holding one of the inmates tied up in his office. Now all of this would sound fairly ordinary, except the cast consists entirely of midgets and dwarves!

AUCH ZWERGE HABEN ANGEFANGEN (or EVEN DWARVES STARTED SMALL) is one those films that is hard to figure out. Some critics have said this film is about locking away societies freaks from the rest of the normal world, but that is hardly the case. In this films world everyone is apparently a midget or a dwarf, even though the sets are set to ordinary scale. The head of the institution is a midget. So is a woman from the outside who arrives briefly asking for directions (She drives a normal sized car). All in all it sounds like a film that was dreamed up as some ones idea of a joke.

This film is fun to watch, at least for the first quarter hour. After that the film starts to become rough going. The film really has no beginning and no real end. Its all middle. After awhile watching midgets commit endless acts of vandalism becomes tedious and boring. Half way through the film the inmates begin to commit acts of cruelty on animals, which makes the film rather unpleasant. The crucifixtion of a monkey on a cross is not my idea of good taste. This is one of those films that is unusual enough that I would recommend seeing it more than once, to try and understand it's true meaning. Enjoy.