Les nains aussi ont commencé petits

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.

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.

This film isn't just depraved and misanthropic, it's depraved and misanthropic with heart.

Despite it's grotesqueness, it depicts a fantasy of rebellion and transgression that I've loved for years. The urge to break free and destroy the confining objects and circumstances of our lives is within all of us. The potential joy of trashing and rendering inoperable our cars, the implements of our work, even our foodstuffs and houses lurks somewhere on a subconcious level, wether we are able to admit it to ourselves or not. Herzog has made an archetypal statement, very simply and unambiguously. The exhilaration of watching these laughing little people dismantle, bludgeon and set fire to their surroundings is immense

I find I have a weird empathy with the character Hombre, the small guy who happily follows the group and laughs while he watches all the destruction. He has a kind of humble nobility which is revealed at the beginning of the film when he refuses to talk to police.

Herzog is important to me. He seeks out situations that have recoil, he takes chances and makes honest choices. His being is broken, and that means the choices and the power of the situations affect me.

But sometimes he works with a situation that doesn't have psychic danger. Sometimes he makes bad choices. Sometimes his brokenness is all we get.

I can't say that this is a failed project. These things have their own autonomy and find a way that works. I can't say that I am offended or repelled either. It seems no less depraved than most of life. I'm just disappointed that things did not line up so that it could touch my soul.

Herzog is not an accident; he is an engineered vessel. He made himself, makes himself. He works at this. In this case, he successfully created a environment. He already has established the balance he would keep between highly stylized abstractions and discovered raw truth. But his means for abstracting are not yet mature. His choices in what raw things he finds are wrong, wrong for him and us.

I have to think of this as practice for "Hearts of Glass," which is something of a masterpiece along these lines.

A problem apart from all this, all this about him as an immature artist, there is another problem. Werner is German and carries a notion that the guilt of existence can be somehow formalized. This translates for most "reviewers" in this being an allegory of corrupt society I some form; the fears of the reviewer determine the allegory. That stuff gets in the way.

There is a potentially remarkable scene. Since the midgets are of all size and mental carriage, there is a clear order, physically manifest. The two — let's say — weakest members of this society are forced into a bed to have sex. The mob cackles behind the door. Later, a larger wiser woman gives some wisdom to her inferior, the "wife." She shows a cigar box full of dead bugs dressed in formal attire, wedding garments.

"I have a spider here with eight legs. I know spiders have six. I was going to knit it a sweater."

This could have been devastating. This could have changed lives and sparked silent revolutions. A later Herzog would have made it work, found how to make it have power shooting toward us.

Here, it is just part of a dull spectacle.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

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...