Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) User Reviews

Herzog's most powerful imagery yet

[juanathan · 8/10 · 22 July 2005]

Werner Herzog's sophomore effort is probably his most bizarre to date. The whole cast is compromised of dwarfs who take over an institution and wreak havoc. This treat for Herzog fans is very entertaining.

The film does have its problems though. The first half hour is hard to sit through but this is the type of film that gets better as it goes on. Also, I was expecting more of an ending. The ending, although funny, seems that it just does not fit and ended too abruptly.

As I said in my title, I think this has Herozg's most powerful images. With the dwarfs wreaking havoc and celebrating with smiles on their while African tribe music is playing, the scenes are very bizarrely beautiful. The movie is very entertaining and very funny. Hombre has probably the best laugh I have ever heard in my life. He definitely brings real evil to the film. The cinematography is great (yeah, what else is new in a Herzog film?). The message of the film is also very profound.

Although this is definitely not Herzog's best, it is one hell of a trip!

has its moments, but generally is not top-shelf Herzog despite it's ambitions

[Quinoa1984 · 7/10 · 8 February 2007]

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.

Herzog's "small" triumph

[Coventry · 8/10 · 8 September 2005]

I'm almost ashamed to say it but...this film truly TERRIFIED me! Usually speaking, this is like one of the best compliments a movie can ever receive, but I'm afraid that in the case of "Even Dwarfs Started Small" this feeling is very misplaced. Werner Herzog's minor masterpiece is intended as an allegoric social portrait, hence I'm not very proud to admit that it haunted me all night long. As wrong and unsympathetic as it may come across, these little people look naturally eerie and their appearances made an impression on me that was even stronger than the mesmerizing story. "Even Dwarfs Started Small" is a revolutionary film, pretty much covering all the daily wars every human being wages, only the protagonists are all dwarfs. Since these people's position in society already are oppressed as it is, this film looks extra powerful and compelling. All the actors and actresses deliver amazing performances, even though none of them had any experience in cinema. Especially the 'main' character Hombre is a truly intriguing man. Other aspects that increase the depressing intensity of this film are the black and white cinematography, the extended sequences showing farm animals and – most of all – the raw, tribal music. This definitely was one of the toughest reviews I ever wrote, simply because this is such a multilateral classic and I regretfully can't get past my personal fear of small shapes...

You laugh for a while until it sinks in.

[cinemadaz · 14 November 2001]

Werner Herzog made his madman mark with this, his second feature film. Inmates at some sort of institution take over for hilarious and anarchic results. You laugh for a while until it sinks in. The haunting tone, other world locations and sympathy with those on the edge of society set the scene for Herzog's later and better-known masterpieces AGUIRRE and MYSTERY OF KASPAR HAUSER. The German director doesn't exploit outcasts; he loves and defends them, showing that normal people are the ones with something to prove. He insists that it is not the actors who are small, but "the world that has gotten out of shape." Filming was rough: one actor was run over by the driver-less car in the film and another caught on fire. Herzog promised the actors that at the end of shooting he would jump into a spiny cactus to show his understanding. He still has some of the needles in his leg. But this won't appeal to a lot of the usual trash film hounds, as they really want the mainstream versions of "edgy".

Dwarfs Gone Wild!

[NateManD · 7/10 · 30 July 2005]

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!

A strange curiosity.

[ThrownMuse · 7/10 · 11 March 2007]

I don't even know where to start with this one. The story seems to be set in a world of "little people," but everything (buildings, cars, furniture) seems to be created for "regular-sized people." This pretty much sets the tone for the film. It takes place at one building, which is some sort of institution whose "inmates" have recently escaped. "The President" stays locked up in a room on the second floor, holding one of the "inmates" captive. Instead of fleeing the area, the "inmates" stay outside of the building and rebel until their cohort is freed. Their rebellion goes from organized to filled with rage and insanity, involving animal torture, dangerous play with vehicles, foodfights, and teasing the blind.

The movie is ostensibly a commentary on both imprisonment and rebellion, but can it just as easily be taken as an exploitative "Midgets Gone Wild"? It's debatable. For some, watching this will be like experiencing a nightmare. I think this is one of the earliest films I've seen where "little people" are used to produce a surreal effect, something that has been done regularly in the works of David Lynch and critiqued in the amusing "Living in Oblivion." It is easy to see how this movie has influenced the likes of Lynch, Harmony Korine, and even Nine Inch Nails (there is a monkey crucifixion very similar to the one in the "Closer" video.) The DVD commentary with Herzog isn't particularly informative, but is still fascinating because it is really an interview by Crispin Glover (whose recent "What Is It?" stars a cast of actors with Downs Syndrome.)

Fantastic!

[nekrochop · 10/10 · 23 November 2001]

This is Herzog's most telling film.

The world he has created sees dwarfs confined in an un-named, oppressive system. When they finally revolt against the machine, they don't know what to do with themselves and ultimately resort to destroying the things around them (cars, trees, animals).

Bizarre, beautiful, and horrifically engaging, this is a unique experience that demands your full attention.

Give it a go (the ANCHOR BAY DVD even has audio commentary from Herzog!!) - you won't be disappointed.

A work of visual artistry, for those who can stand animal cruelty

[Leofwine_draca · 6/10 · 20 April 2016]

A typically thought-provoking movie from German art-house director Werner Herzog. This is one of his earliest productions and it shows in the black and white photography and the single-location shooting (in Lanzarote, no less), but nonetheless it turns out to be just as well put together as the later, bigger movies in the director's resume.

Like the 1938 western THE TERROR OF TINY TOWN before it, EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL is a film entirely cast with dwarf and midget actors. As with most Herzog movies, much of the fun comes from deciphering the hidden meanings; this one's an allegory about mankind's cruelty to those less than himself, destruction of the environment, and Herzog's overriding theory that the natural state of things is chaos. It has similarities to the two documentaries Herzog made about disability and much in common with the later STROSZEK too.

It's a difficult film to define too much, but as a work of visual style it's certainly electrifying. Herzog captures memorable image after memorable image, and that haunting laugh by Helmut Doring stays in your memory long after. The only reason I can't rate this film higher is that I'm no fan of animal cruelty, and there's a lot of it here, so much that it becomes impossible to ignore towards the end. But that last scene is almost as memorably kooky as STROSZEK's.

Social Comment, and a Smile

[Ola Lundin · 10/10 · 7 February 1999]

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

Strangest movie I've ever seen

[isotope2112 · 6/10 · 12 April 2002]

<CONTAINS SPOILERS>

The basic premise: A bunch of midgets take over the asylum they are at. Do they try and escape? No... they just wander around chasing chickens and torturing 2 blind midgets. The most disconcerting thing to me was the African tribal soundtrack. It's completely out of place with the action and the German dialogue. The whole movie meanders to a finale where the main midget Hombre stands laughing at a camel defecating for 5 minutes until he starts to cough from laughing to much.

More than half the people I saw this with deemed it the worst movie they ever saw. I'm not sure I hated it, but I'm not sure I liked it either. Being a fan of the midget movie genre, I give it 4 bonus points for the all midget cast. 6/10 (or 2/10 if you don't like midget movies).

Obvious and self-indulgent.

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 29 July 2017]

horrid opening song' dead chickens and mice

"Even Dwarfs Started Small" is a heavy-handed allegory about freedom. Starting during the opening credits, Werner Herzog shows where the movie will go when he shows a chicken pecking at a dead chicken...and throughout the movie you see chickens playing with dead mice and other such nonsense/symbolism to give the audience an idea where the rest of the film is going. As for the main story, it's confusing and tough going. A bunch of tiny people have taken over some sort of sanitarium. And, through the course of the film it goes from fun and games to, ultimately, chaos and mayhem. All this is accompanied by the most god-awful music I've heard in ages (that ultra-high pitched singing might just induce violence) and the incessant creepy giggling of the actors. While many see this as a brilliant allegory, I just saw it as self-indulgent and annoying. And, watching these small people prancing about for what seemed like an eternity is not my idea of a good film.

By the way, I am NOT anti-Herzog. He's done some amazing films (particularly his documentaries)...but this one is, to me, a huge disappointment.

Do not watch this film if on prescribed medication!

[mojoejoe-179-922325 · 9/10 · 26 February 2012]

I am currently going through the back catalogue of Werner Herzog and all that I have watched have been awesome, and this is no exception! So weird and bizarre, the story of a group of dwarfs, that have escaped from some kind of facility and are running amok! Their leader has been tied up by a member of staff, who is having a nervous breakdown. They let a car drive endlessly round in a circle whilst crucifying a monkey.

The wonderful character of hombre, always struggling not to laugh whilst being put on top of a huge motorbike and burning pots of flowers! And how this film ever went unnoticed by animal protection groups us beyond me, hurling chickens through windows and pushing piglets around with big sticks.

Essential viewing!

In A Tiny Country, There Is A Tiny Town With No Rules

[loganx-2 · 6/10 · 18 June 2008]

I bought this movie before I watched it on impulse. It's about what I believe is an insane asylum completely populated by dwarfs who, lock up the guards and run amok. They light things on fire, they cannot properly operate large machinery, they cock fight, and demand freedom, and then run around some more. Rebellion has never looked so ridiculous as it does here. Amongst the small group of those who like Werner Herzog films there is an even smaller group who like this film. It's a very long, very tasteless joke, with a great punchline, but it's almost worth it just to watch the finally freed warden and voice of reason for the majority in the film, suddenly begin to argue with a tree, and win!

Could have been much better

[BrandtSponseller · 5/10 · 31 July 2006]

I generally like Herzog a lot, but this is definitely not one of my favorite films of his. Yes, it has a lot of fabulous images and moments, but for me, the problem is that it doesn't work as a film very well. It's kinda poetic, kinda surreal, kinda nightmarish (Herzog has said that the film is a prolonged nightmare in his view), and kinda like a lengthy performance art piece, but in my view, the individual elements are not tied together as well as they should be. It does seem like he simply took a group of dwarfs out to the desert, gave them some rough improvisational boundaries, told them to go crazy, filmed it, and somewhat randomly edited it.

In a very rough way, the film does have a plot. It begins with a group of dwarfs in something like a prison. Someone off-camera seems to ask one about a crime, and then most of the film is in flashback, giving us the story of how the dwarfs ended up in their situation at the beginning of the film. The backstory has the dwarfs rebelling at some kind of institution. At first it seems like maybe it was a mental home, but then an authority figure keeps referring to himself as an "instructor", and there is talk at various points of a "principal" being away, so maybe it's supposed to be a school.

The bulk of the film is just the dwarfs rebelling, by doing things like breaking manufactured objects, harassing a couple blind dwarfs, torturing animals, destroying plants and trees, burning stuff and having a food fight.

As fun (in a dark, twisted way, of course) as a lot of this stuff is in isolation, and as entertaining as some of the dialogue and behavior of the dwarfs is--the laughing is particularly infectious, there's not a lot of structure to anything, including, on a meta level, to the film as an artwork. There are thematic and content resemblances to Tod Browning's film Freaks (1932), you can see how some of this stuff probably influenced David Lynch, and Herzog made slight allusions to films like The Wild One (1953), but Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen is not as good as either the films that influenced it or the films that it influenced.

There are themes explored, and interpretations abound because the film is so intentionally ambiguous. You can see the film as a critique from many different angles on rebellion, you can see it as a meditation on entropy, you can see it as a commentary on people inheriting a world they didn't make . . . you can see it as many things. While all that stuff is interesting to think about, having an intriguing theme isn't sufficient for having a good film, either.

Still, Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen is worth a watch for fans of weirdness because of its arresting images and content on a trees level, but I would hardly recommend it to anyone else, and even for us freaks, it's a pity that this couldn't have been a better movie. The potential was there.

Herzog Dwarves a small miracle

[rdaoust1 · 8 August 2001]

This film is hard going, true, but through the chaos and endless repetition can be glimpsed a kind of joy of existence. The dwarves are exaggerations of human behavior, and at the same time, human behavior distilled. Within the confines of the prison complex where the film plays, their actions become more and more outrageous, and through all this a kind of tenderness emerges in their very closeness and comeraderie. Herzog revels in pointing the mirror at his audience, making them take a closer look at themselves, and this film is as good as any example of his take on the human condition.

Interesting

[Cosmoeticadotcom · 7/10 · 10 September 2008]

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 dwarfs, 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 dwarfs- 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.

Herzog!

[paulhjrickards · 7/10 · 4 May 2002]

I like this film, although I dont know why. Like Homer Simpsons view of Twin Peaks: "Great..., I have know idea whats going on."

This film is best described as being what David Lynch's dreams probably look like.

Great film. ...But I have no idea whats going on.

Little people can kick some a**!

[mackjordan210 · 10/10 · 23 July 2014]

Amazing

The honeymoon scene 20 min into it- hilarious.

The food fight 40 min in- hilarious

The boys in Oakland can take a lesson or 2 from the dwarf ridding the whip*. At one point he had time to engage in a cock fight to the death and even crucify a monkey.

To describe it with an analogy, this movie is like a drive across the country.

Some really cool, beautiful, funny, mean, and annoying sections separated by vast sections of monotony.

The big drawback: its an hour and a half of listening to a couple laughing Randy from Christmas story

*for all you squares out there, ridding the whip sometimes is refereed to when the driver of a car leaves the drivers seat while the car is in motion

This is just too much

[Fpi · 6/10 · 23 February 2007]

This might actually be Werner Herzog's strongest statement. In fact, this film is just too much. It describes a weird society declining into total mayhem, and the characters go absolutely mad. Everything is both quite funny and extremely disturbing. It's almost like watching the ending of Herzog's Stroszek for an hour and a half.

There seems to have been some maltreatment of animals (chicken in particular) in the making of the movie, which should be totally unnecessary.

Every normal person should avoid this like the plague, while those who adore very strange movies should get it at all costs.

gritty surrealism

[framptonhollis · 9/10 · 20 November 2017]

Sit back, relax, close your eyes. Imagine this. A film...a flicker on the movie screen. There are laughing, yelling, running dwarfs setting fires as a driverless car spins around senselessly behind them...they tie a monkey to a cross and the soundtrack sounds like a tribal chant. That is but one brief moment in this 95 minute hellride.

You might hate this movie, even if you love Herzog and all his other movies. You might love this movie, especially if you love Herzog and all his other movies! It's an odd film, no doubt, even odder than the average Herzog film. But it all works. The cast of characters is made up entirely of dwarfs, most of whom are mentally insane and are rebelling against their mental institution. They inhabit a desolate, almost post apocalyptic landscape where everything seems ugly and unpleasant. Animals roam around, many of them die or are at least harmed in some way (early Herzog films are quite questionable in terms of animal abuse)...there are blind dwarfs who are bullied and tricked, a camel is ready to give birth, and plenty more. Everything is uncomfortable...the entire atmosphere is ugly and off putting. Nothing seems to be right. And, yet, it is still uproariously hilarious. There aren't really any "gags" in the film exactly; instead, the humor derives from the surreal absurdities planted in nearly every frame of the film. It's a very zany, Herzogian type of comedy that will only appeal to certain watchers.

The whole film is balls to the walls crazy from start to finish, it never takes a breather and instead wanders gleefully through the many corridors of utter insanity. It is anarchic, upsetting, creepy, uncomfortable, humorous, immature, avant garde, sensational, and a brilliant product of a wholly unique type of cinema that Herzog seems to have revolutionized. What type of cinema is this exactly? I cannot say...it is so dark, wonderful, and strange that it defies language and can only be witnessed through visuals...

Even Herzog Started Small

[JackBenjamin · 6/10 · 19 March 2009]

I don't quite know what to make of this film. I might have to watch it again to see if ideas coalesce. Herzog, if nothing else, makes you think while you watch the images move. His dramas are so stylized that you almost have to approach them from a tangent, stealthily, which is how he seems to view life.

There's no main character to focus on here. Instead we focus on the society and how it functions. It seems that full-grown people are treated like Homeric Greeks treated the Gods: indifferent observers, manipulators of fate. But the dwarfs play God, too. They seem indifferent to any life deemed less significant than their own. They destroy the nature surrounding them. They seize the devices of their Gods (the car, for example) but are left unable to find and appropriate any usefulness in them.

I can't figure out why Herzog chose dwarfs (little people) as the subject of the film, other than to take what would have been a very different picture and give it a good dose of quirk. Since this, we've seen Living in Oblivion, In Bruges, and countless others point out the silliness of this conceit with some sharp self-referential wit. I hate to be critical of Werner Herzog, a man who (after watching his documentaries especially) obviously possesses a gentle, probing soul and a deep intelligence, but I just couldn't quite discern this.

The best guess I have on the first viewing is a nihilistic view of God vs. man vs. beast. To some extent we are all three at any given point.

Even Giants Trip and Fall...

[Rodrigo_Amaro · 3/10 · 11 November 2013]

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

One of the strangest twisted movies ever!

[stridernews · 8/10 · 15 May 2001]

I actually registered for IMDB because of this movie. This is a movie for people that are looking for something different--I mean really different. A cast of little people indulge in all sorts of gruesome and horrific acts. Note any who can't stand scenes of animal torture should steer clear.

Werner's Checklist

[capncrusty · 1/10 · 23 July 2005]

THINGS TO DO TODAY: 1) Get a bunch of miscellaneous people together; 2) Take them somewhere, anywhere; 3) Tell them: "Don't worry about it; just do some stuff"; 4) Film them doing it (preferably in black-and-white, for that "noir"-feel); 5) Get a lot of footage of landscapes, where nothing in particular happens; 6) Do some minor, pointless editing; 7) Release the results in a series of "recognized art theaters"; 9) Sit back and laugh over all the acclaim, as typified by: "Piercing insight into the human condition!" "Fantastic! Herzog at his best!" "I was moved at the (fill in appropriate "Film Appreciation 101" jargon)!"; 9) Accept an award; 10) Watch the bucks come rolling in.

FOR TOMORROW: Do it all over again.

Come on, folks: admit it to yourselves, if not to others. Don't you sometimes feel just a little bit conned by such drivel as "Even Dwarfs Started Small"?