Even Dwarfs Started Small

Starring:Erna Gschwendtner, Gerd Gickel, Marianne Saar, Pepi Hermine, Paul Glauer, Hertel Minkner, Gerhard Maerz, Gisela Hertwig, Helmut DÃ¶ring, Gertrud Piccini
Director: Werner Herzog
Studio: Anchor Bay
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
With a cast composed entirely of dwarfs, Werner Herzog (Aguirre, the Wrath of God) tells a tale of asylum inmates taking over the asylum. The institution's governor is holed up in his own home with a rebel hostage to keep him company. As the inmates' wrangling for the release of their fellow captive comes to naught, all symbols of ordered society are mocked and brought to a shambles. Typewriters are smashed, flowers are set on fire, a dinner ceremony ends with the slapstick smashing of plates, a monkey is tied to a crucifix and paraded in solemn observance, chickens resort to cannibalism. All vestige of order is disrupted in Herzog's blackly humorous, fatalistic parable, leaving us with nothing but the mad, strident cackling of a dwarf. It's not just that the dwarfs are grotesques, but that we all are grotesques in this eerie little world, and it's only through Herzog's eye that we see this clearly. This deceptively simple story builds with amazing power from beginning to end, brutal and compassionate, uncompromising and mad. --Jim Gay

Werner Herzog Collection
Average customer rating:

A must for Herzog fans

Wonderful films, Anchor Bay has a few problems

Lost & Found: "Fata Morgana"

Manufacturing defect?

Werner Herzog - An Unconventional Study

Werner Herzog Collection
Starring: Werner Herzog Collection
Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
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ASIN: B0001ZX0F6
Release Date: 2004-08-03

Customer Reviews:

A must for Herzog fans.......2007-05-30

With or without Klaus Kinski, Werner Herzog takes us into strange realms of the human spirit. This collection is eclectic, wonderful, and an absolute must for Herzog fans. Hypnotized actors, evil little people, gorgeous, capable Eva Mattes, and the indescribable Bruno S. make up this disturbing, brilliant collection. Ann Doreen

Wonderful films, Anchor Bay has a few problems.......2006-04-17

These are stunning films. "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser" is one of the classics; the shot of the rye field in the wind alone is worth the price of admission. It's good that Anchor Bay is emphasizing that they'll rectify defective disks, though, because problems abound. Thanks to an earlier reviewer for posting their complaints URL! On my copy of "Kaspar Hauser" the commentary simply won't turn off (and it's not that I haven't figured out how, because it turns off on the other disks). Then occasionally it turns off all by itself, but if you try to get the subtitles, it turns back on -- so you can't watch the film WITH subtitles but WITHOUT commentary. Exasperating! While I was fiddling with commentaries, however, I managed to watch the whole of "Heart of Glass" with commentary. "Heart of Glass" is not the most accessible film -- not because, as Herzog says, it's slow, but because hypnotized actors are more like zombies than actors. But the film with the commentary on is the most surreal, fascinating experience -- the stories behind the making of the film are an artwork in themselves. The same is true of "Kaspar Hauser" -- an unintended benefit of the disk problem. Providing Anchor Bay makes good on their defective disks, this is a great set.

Lost & Found: "Fata Morgana" .......2005-12-29

I've encountered a snag with "Fata Morgana" as well-- in my case, it was missing entirely. However, I contacted Anchor Bay's feedback department (http://www.anchorbayentertainment.com/index.asp?p=FAQ_Problem) and they sent me a fully functional DVD pretty quickly. I'm glad they did, as it's a gorgeous piece well worth seeing.

Manufacturing defect?.......2005-08-03

Has anyone else had a problem with 'Lessons of Darkness/Fata Morgana'? I've tried two different copies of this box set and the same few minutes at the end of Fata Morgana won't play. It skips and goes back to the DVD menu.

Regardless of that, the box set is worth it. An amazing collection of films, well put together. I want to see the end of 'Fata Morgana', but the other six movies are spectacular.

Werner Herzog - An Unconventional Study.......2005-03-14

Those that are new to the world of Werner Herzog are advised to stay away from this boxset until they discover his collaborations with actor Klaus Kinski... The HERZOG/KINSKI boxset (also from Anchor Bay) is essential, and should be your first exposure to this challenging director's work.

Those of you that have seen his more famous works (AGUIRRE, NOSFERATU, FITZCARRALDO, etc.) and want to explore further into Herzog's catalogue, then this is the ideal boxset. It's important to note, though, that it's a fairly unconventional series of films that vary wildly from style and genre.

There are only two "conventional" films in this boxset and those are THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR HAUSER and STROSZEK. Despite the fact that both films have fairly linear plots, they often slip into the director's notorious weirdness (the final few minutes of STROSZEK for instance).

There are three documentaries in this boxset. LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY is the most straightfoward of the bunch but features a riveting story of wartime survival. LESSONS OF DARKNESS is about the burning of the oil fields in Iraq, and it features an almost subliminal science-fiction approach to the material (if I wasn't told about it in the liner notes, I don't think I would have picked it up on my first viewing). FATA MORGANA is certainly a strange film, the genesis of which came about Herzog's desire to film mirages in the desert.

Rounding out the package are the two feature length experimental films, and the real highlight of this boxset. HEART OF GLASS is a bizarre twist on a local folk tale in which the entire cast (with the exception of one character) performed under hypnosis... the effect is startling and quite eerie. EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL is my favorite of the director's non-Kinski films, and simply defies explanation... dwarfs, camels, cars riding around in circles, chickens. It's all an exercise in absurdist anarchy, and you simply can't stop watching it.

Recommended for fans of the surreal.

Average customer rating:

Like a horrible car accident...
The charm of chaos....
Could have been much better
From Small Acorns...
Quite Insane

Even Dwarfs Started Small
Starring: Erna Gschwendtner , Pepi Hermine , Gerd Gickel , Marianne Saar , and Paul Glauer
Director: Werner Herzog
Manufacturer: Starz / Anchor Bay
ProductGroup: DVD
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ASIN: B00003CWHQ
Release Date: 1999-12-14

Amazon.com

With a cast composed entirely of dwarfs, Werner Herzog (Aguirre, the Wrath of God) tells a tale of asylum inmates taking over the asylum. The institution's governor is holed up in his own home with a rebel hostage to keep him company. As the inmates' wrangling for the release of their fellow captive comes to naught, all symbols of ordered society are mocked and brought to a shambles. Typewriters are smashed, flowers are set on fire, a dinner ceremony ends with the slapstick smashing of plates, a monkey is tied to a crucifix and paraded in solemn observance, chickens resort to cannibalism. All vestige of order is disrupted in Herzog's blackly humorous, fatalistic parable, leaving us with nothing but the mad, strident cackling of a dwarf. It's not just that the dwarfs are grotesques, but that we all are grotesques in this eerie little world, and it's only through Herzog's eye that we see this clearly. This deceptively simple story builds with amazing power from beginning to end, brutal and compassionate, uncompromising and mad. --Jim Gay

Customer Reviews:

Like a horrible car accident..........2007-05-12

you simply can't look away. There is no plot, little sense, no "message" that you don't have to come up with yourself (perhaps the boon and bane of social rebellion). And that's what makes it wonderful--you can't wrench yourself from it and find yourself identifying with the rebels, even when they are out of control and destroying the fabric of social order itself.

The charm of chaos...........2007-03-08

I saw this in a crappy 16mm print in Chicago (on a double feature with Fata Morgana). The picture was quite faded, and the sound was muddled, and, yet, the brilliance of the film came through. Now it's on DVD (in a great transfer by our friends at Anchor Bay), and it's an ever better film. The film is essentially a bunch of dwarfs/little people taking over an asylum, and proceeding to destroy everything in sight. You see cannibalistic chickens, a monkey crucified (not actually crucified, but the image is quite unique), flower pots soaked with kerosene, a camel, and a runaway truck. Some of the dwarfs were injured in the film (one caught on fire, and another was run over by the truck...both survived, thankfully), and Herzog said to the crew that he would jump in a cactus patch if everyone survived the production. They all did, and Herzog kept his word. He recounts this story rather endearingly in Les Blank's short film "Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe" (which is on the Burden of Dreams DVD). I really wasn't disturbed by the film, just strangely exhilarated. It's a great piece of work.

Could have been much better.......2006-07-31

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.

From Small Acorns..........2006-07-13

Werner Herzog's second feature film still retains its ability to both shock and disturb and highlights the maverick German's propensity to covet controversy and take risks. In it's depiction of a world entirely made up of dwarves he forces the audience to ask the uncomfortable question of what it is too be normal? The film's detailing of a dwarf uprising at an unnamed and mysterious institution, has an allegorical echo of the many protests and rebellions hitting the USA, Mexico and Germany itself around the turn of the decade. The question of normality thus takes on frightening and nightmarish tones when one considers the various human rights violations occurring in the world at that time. The sense of a nightmare also lends the film a strange and cloying atmosphere, not unlike that found in an effective horror film. The desolate and dead landscape of the Spanish island of Lanzarote only goes to reinforce this sense of fear and isolation and is one of the most effective spatial metaphors to surface in Herzog's cinema. He effortlessly exposes our deepest and innermost anxieties and how we take so many things for granted (such as opening a door or climbing onto a bed). Accusations of exploitation have been levelled at Herzog in regard to this film, but in reality he affords the dwarves a decency and humanity, and a sense of reality by the manner in which he shoots them and composes them in the shot. With an open ended narrative structure and an equally strange soundtrack, Herzog showed the world that his lexicon of film language was to be different. Not an intentional deconstruction like Godard, but a much more naturalistic form of film-making, film-making based on gut instinct. If one can persevere through the form and the nihilistic tone, one discovers a treasure trove overflowing with symbolism and metaphor, and at the film's conclusion a better understanding of the human condition.

Quite Insane.......2005-12-30

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.

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