Even viewers who've seen Freaks won't be completely prepared for Werner Herzog's bizarre Even Dwarfs Started Small. The film is set in a dismal mental institution, wherein dwell several midgets, dwarfs and other "oddities." Sick of being tormented and exploited by the so-called normal people of the world, the inmates stage a coup, taking over the asylum and utterly reversing the status quo (Herzog's apparent attempt to draw parallels between the events on screen and such real-life upheavals as
Vietnam). As in his other films, the director imbues his misshapen characters with a sort of regal grandeur, as if to purge the German wartime atrocities against "underdesirables." Herzog also produced, wrote and provided the musical arrangements for Even Dwarfs Started Small, which was initially released in Germany in 1970 (two years after its completion) as Auch Zwerge haben klein angefagen. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Even Dwarfs Started Small eventually is indistinguishable from its Germanic, side-show spectacle, as if it were a movie that had been conceived by the same kind of perverse, uninvolved intelligence that had created the world of the film.
Not a vicious denial of the legitimacy of revolt (as too many critics have charged) but a bitter lament over the disservice revolutionaries do their revolutions.
Patient and unrelenting, Herzog stages a total deterioration of narrative logic and social norms, as emblematized by a crucified monkey and a cannibalizing chicken.
Truly one of the most bizarre and hilariously disturbing freakshows ever executed by a major director, Even Dwarfs Started Small is sure to impress and perplex even the most ardent admirers of German auteur Werner Herzog.
As far as I'm concerned, Herzog helped cinema evolve from its relatively stale existence at that time and paved the way for so many directors and producers who didn't realise what they could do. He broke down boundaries and revolutionised cinema but you hear anyone give him the credit he deserves for the same reason
you will never find a t-shirt with his face on it! I love this film, I wish I'd made it!
Disturbing. Oh, the poor piglets trying desperately to suckle on their mother's teats after it was already dead. Hombre has the most memorable laughter ever.
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