Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970)

I actually admire what writer/director Werner Herzog was going for with Even Dwarfs Started Small even if I think he didn't quite execute it in a manner that involved me enough. It's got a great idea behind it- inmates at a mental institution, on one of the Canary Islands pre-tourism, create an anarchic uprising with practically no one else in sight, and the headmaster locks himself in with a retarded patient while the others go wild and crazy, albeit still staying in the confines of the grounds of the area. I also liked when Herzog went for an interesting route in the picture psychologically and in mood, which was to show how chaos and disarray, even if among little people, can actually become rather aimless and uncanny.

There is no plot, it's just a series of interconnected segments that seem to be happening in real time, where they do things like ogle at naked girls in magazines, kill a pig randomly, give constant torture to a couple of blind dwarfs, circle around a constantly 360 degree spinning car, and with Herzog sometimes just as interested in the animals (chickens, a camel, the pig, a monkey) on the premises as he is with his whacked out little folk.

But the problem arises then with the work that since it is plot less- even if it ends with the headmaster, talking to a branch outside, as a metaphor for human control and what is and what isn't a free will or spirit perhaps- there's the danger of becoming tedious with what goes on, and that's exactly the trap that I think Herzog falls into here. It's not that he is out blatantly to mock them (although, like with Stroszek, the tendency to laugh is hard to avoid at times, especially with its documentary-style anything-goes approach), but there isn't any grand metaphor I could really obtain from the material, at least from a first viewing, and Herzog seemed to be having too much fun getting the dwarfs to do both the mundane and whatever to get something consistently interesting.

While he does have one character who ends up being quite memorable, the freaky-laughing, hilarious Hombre (all one-note, of course, but then again isn't everyone here), there's nothing to tie the parts together that are worth watching for to make it good enough for the whole. There's surrealism of course (the fate of the monkey and the car), and an image or two that strikes greatly (when the headmaster or whomever tries to get the attention of the one-passerby on the island), but it just didn't compel me or surprise me in ways that Herzog at his best can do.

Not that I'm telling you to not see the film, as a fan I mean. The title alone should be a calling card to anyone who might have a bit of interest in the subject matter, and I'm sure a work like this has inspired a few avant-garde director's out there (I saw it as a possible fore-father for Korine's Gummo). Yet it's own lackadaisical use of narrative and Herzog's insistence on ambiguity and derangement, makes it a kind of schizophrenic work that makes it a fun yet flawed trip.

Fmovies: Here's an honorable director going extremely bad with something painfully terrible, and it's the first time that I ever see something truly worrying from an outstanding director. Person in question is Werner Herzog ("Aguirre, the Wrath of God" and "Stroszek"). He was very young when he made it, one of his earliest experiences and it could be a good film if his head was in the game, by that I mean if he managed to mix surrealism with a concrete text, including his political criticisms and a bit of fantasy and allegory. Buñuel could do it perfectly. But this isn't Buñuel doing an allegedly political allegory on Nazism or Fascism disguised as an empty story involving revolted dwarfs. This is Herzog going completely nuts with something that leads to nothing.

"Even Dwarfs Started Small" revolves a strange dwarf revolution that goes erratically bad when angry dwarfs take control of a little island controlled by one police officer (also a midget) who arrested one of the revolution leaders, leaving him tied to a chair. The latter isn't worried, always laughing and never speaking with his captor while his friends are vandalizing in the streets, driving cars, hurting animals and placing a strange hierarchy between themselves. The riot drags on and on as the movie, without a single worthy dialog, scenes played on randomly and with a theme song (played like four or five times during the whole thing) working as a violation of our patience and senses, and no ways of being translated whatever that language was.

It lacks in coherence time and time again. Where's the drive to make us going? Where's the ambition and the social commentary? If this was a comedy, I didn't laugh once. An horror film? Well, it was so horrific I couldn't believe in my eyes. Empty images that goes nowhere, they're just there because it can scripted, it can be directed, it can be filmed but it can't cause anything other than boredom, repulse, strangeness. Being bizarre for its own sake is useless (unless if you're creating a powerful imagery like Malle did like "Black Moon") and Herzog isn't a director of such ideals. At least that's what I thought.

One of those movies you feel completely exhausted, emptied and imagining the worst of yourself (Why am I still watching this mess? Where are you going with this, Werner? Those kind of thoughts), "Even Dwarfs..." is simply not worthy of anyone's time. Wanna discover Werner, go everywhere else but here. The symbolic rating is a formality related with traces of originality, good scenes, or parts when I thought this could be saved and be a fine movie. But that song will haunt me for life. 3/10

The ultimate concern of Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) is not the plot or the characters - or indeed, the obvious gimmick of the casting and presentation - but in the creation of a certain sense or atmosphere pertaining to the broader representation of madness and insanity. As a result, it can viewed as either a metaphor or a microcosm of society, with a cynical and satirical comment on the then contemporary ideas of a civilization with no rules and limitations - a forced utopia if you will - and the inevitable escalation of violence, corruption and contempt that could only ever thrive in such a characteristically "free" environment. Although these ideas and interpretations do lend a certain sense of context to the images and themes presented herein, the eventual intent of Even Dwarfs Started Small is to present a story on the most simple and visual of levels; creating an escalating sense of emotion that moves wildly from moments of humour to horror until, finally, reaching a fever-pitch level, wherein all the notions blur together into one.

Herzog would probably reject any interpretation other than the literal one of dwarfs rebelling against authority, but then again, Herzog's word isn't intended to be taken as gospel. The natural contradictions of the set-up here, in which the fight of the characters to free themselves from what they see as a corrupt and abusive society, ultimately giving way to something that is even more oppressive, is an intelligent one; something that you could interpret on a political level, or in fact, as a wider-reaching comment about the position of the outsider within society. Likewise, the casting of the dwarfs' works on a number of other, more interesting levels, most obviously in the creation of a world that we must carefully re-adjust to and learn to experience from a completely different perspective. The buildings, cars, furniture, trees and animals remain the same as how we would experience them on a day-to-day basis, but thrown into this veritable mix we have characters that are literally dwarfed - overwhelmed even - by the world around them, creating a further rift that propels these notions of revolution and defiance.

In a world in which even climbing onto a bed or reaching up to pull the door handle becomes a accomplishment as epic in scope as that of Herzog's ultimate personification of single-minded determination and intensity, Fitzcarraldo (1982), the plight of the dwarfs in this film takes on a greater meaning, as the film begins with something of a moral victory that simply cannot be sustained given the heightened sense of reality that the film exists in. We're never entirely sure as to what triggers the revolt, or why there is only one dwarf left in charge of the compound, barricaded in his office with one of the other dwarfs tied to a chair as a hostage, or indeed, what purposes this compound fulfilled in its previously active form. This persistent abstraction of the background details of the story forces us to focus more closely on the relationship between the larger group unit, and the slow spiral of dysfunction and destruction that escalates from one scene to the next. If you attempt to approach the film on any such level of story and character, you might possibly be disappointed or even offended by Herzog's stark presentation. Instead, the real point of the film is in the atmosphere that it creates, and in the feelings that it forms as we watch these enigmatic and often provocative images unfold.

If you're familiar with

Even Dwarfs Started Small fmovies. Director Werner Herzog created a bizarre revolutionary world made up of dwarfs. Every actor in the film is a dwarf, not to mention angry and German too. They all decide to rebel against the system, but a revolution is tough when you can't even reach the door handle. One of their friends is held hostage for interrogation by a rich authority figure. It's dwarfs to the rescue! Watch in shock as dwarfs try to drive a car, look at porn, set fires, break things and even torture animals. The film even includes a brutal cock fight and the crucifixion of a monkey. "Even Dwarfs Started Small" may be to disturbing for some. To me, it was challenging but worth watching; it shows viewers that your never too small to fight the system!

I guess that I will never stop reviewing this wonderful picture. I was able to find it in a kind of obscure video/bookstore, and has continuosly gone back to it. And everytime I watch it it grows, even though I already thought that it was a great movie the first time I saw it.

So why am I so compelled by it? Probably because of its originality, and not least, its actors (especially Helmut Döring, the littlest that also has a little role in "Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle").

If I rembember it right Leonard Maltin described the film as "truly disturbing", and I guess that he ment that in a positive way, like in the films "Man Bites Dog", "Henry-Portrait of a Serial Killer" or "Clean, Shaven". You get disturbed, like when the mob throws chicken through their supervisors window, and you can clearly see how these chickens hurt themselves, break their wings and legs. But the movie, disturbing and in many scenes very funny, amusing, also includes a social comment (my opinion). Them small dwarfes rages agains the civilization that mocks them, locks them in, and decides to get even by treating animals bad, and by destroying all symbols of western civilization. Think of it, those of you who have seen this film, all they destroy is cars, typewriters, etc, and gross in food and wine. Although social comment wasn't Herzog's first though when making this film it, as in Stroszek, is there.

All said, this is one of the best films I have said, by its scenes, music, dialogue, actors. Bizarre, disturbing, funny, wonderful. I find it great that I can see Herzogian style/form in new directors, as in Harmony Korine's Gummo (remember that scene where a dumb couple 'shouts' at eachother). In this scene, and many more, I can find an Herzog influence.

Have a great time/ Ola Lundin

Werner Herzog's upsetting, black and white, documentary-like EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL concerns the rebellion of a handful of dwarves against the institution in which they are inmates. No average-sized actors appear - just the buildings, furniture and accessories that have been constructed for (and seemingly abandoned by) them. Herzog pulls a double whammy by getting his audience to identify with his performers - indeed, they are shown to express great sensitivity and pain - but doesn't cop out by suggesting that the dwarves will be happy now that they've smashed some windows. A difficult film to watch - and certainly not for the easily-offended.