''Even Dwarfs Started Small'' (german: Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen) is a 1970 West German absurdist comedy-drama film written, produced, and directed by

Werner Herzog Werner Herzog (; born 5 September 1942) is a German film director, screenwriter, author, actor, and opera director, regarded as a pioneer of New German Cinema. His films often feature ambitious protagonists with impossible dreams, people with u ...

Plot

Dwarfs confined in an institution on a remote island rebel against the guards and director, also dwarfs, in a display of mayhem. They gleefully break windows and dishes, cackle maniacally, abandon a running truck to drive itself in circles, engineer

food fight A food fight is a form of chaotic collective behavior, in which foodstuffs are thrown at others in the manner of projectiles. These projectiles are not made nor meant to harm others, but to simply ignite a fight filled with spontaneous food ...

s and

cock fight A cockfight is a blood sport, held in a ring called a cockpit. The history of raising fowl for fighting goes back 6,000 years. The first documented use of the ''word'' gamecock, denoting use of the cock as to a "game", a sport, pastime or ente ...

s, look at

pin-up A pin-up model (known as a pin-up girl for a female and less commonly male pin-up for a male) is a model whose mass-produced pictures see widespread appeal as part of popular culture. Pin-up models were variously glamour models, fashion models ...

magazines, set fire to pots of flowers, kill a large pig, torment some blind dwarfs, and perform a mock

crucifixion Crucifixion is a method of capital punishment in which the victim is tied or nailed to a large wooden cross or beam and left to hang until eventual death from exhaustion and asphyxiation. It was used as a punishment by the Persians, Carthagi ...

of a monkey.

Cast

* Helmut Döring as Hombré * Paul Glauer as Erzieher * Gisela Hertwig as Pobrecita * Hertel Minkner as Chicklets * Gertrud Piccini as Piccini * Marianne Saar as Theresa * Brigitte Saar as Cochina * Gerd Gickel as Pepe * Erna Gschwendtner as Azucar

Production

The film was shot on the Canary Islands, at Lanzarote. The film was produced during the same time period as Herzog's '' Fata Morgana'' and ''

The Flying Doctors of East Africa ''The Flying Doctors of East Africa'' (german: Die Fliegenden Ärzte von Ostafrika) is a 1969 documentary film by Werner Herzog about the "flying doctors" service of the African Medical and Research Foundation in Tanzania and Kenya. The film i ...

'', and there are visual and thematic connections between the three works. Notably, the goggles worn by the blind dwarfs are the same style as the goggles which several people wear in ''Fata Morgana''. During the filming, Herzog gave some strange direction to elicit particular performances from the actors. In directing one dwarf who continually struggled not to laugh, Herzog repeatedly told the actor that he must not laugh, but then made funny faces at him as soon as he started filming. While filming the scene where a van drives in circles with no one at the wheel, one of the actors was run over, but immediately stood up uninjured. During the flower burning scene, the same actor caught fire and Werner Herzog raced over and beat the fire out. The actor only had minor injuries from the fire. After these two accidents, Herzog promised the actors that if they made it through the rest of filming without any more injuries he would jump into a

cactus A cactus (, or less commonly, cactus) is a member of the plant family Cactaceae, a family comprising about 127 genera with some 1750 known species of the order Caryophyllales. The word ''cactus'' derives, through Latin, from the Ancient Gree ...

patch and allow the actors to film him doing so. The film was finished without any further injuries and the director made good his promise and dived into the cacti. Herzog has said, "Getting out was a lot more difficult than jumping in." The vehicle-in-circles scene was inspired by an incident that occurred when Herzog worked as a steward at the Munich Oktoberfest as a young man. Part of his duty was ensuring that drunk patrons did not attempt to drive their cars home, so when a drunk man insisted that he was capable of driving, Herzog got into his car with him, placed the steering wheel on full lock, then got out of his car. The man passed out and the car continued to drive in a circle until it ran out of

petrol Gasoline (; ) or petrol (; ) (see ) is a transparent, petroleum-derived flammable liquid that is used primarily as a fuel in most spark-ignited internal combustion engines (also known as petrol engines). It consists mostly of organic c ...

. This situation was repeated at the end Herzog's 1977 film Stroszek where Stroszek abandons the truck, on fire, circling the parking lot of a roadside amusement park before he kills himself aboard a ski-lift.

Reception

''Even Dwarfs Started Small'' has a 100% approval rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Even Dwarfs Started Small 1970 films 1970s avant-garde and experimental films 1970 comedy-drama films West German films German avant-garde and experimental films German comedy-drama films 1970 independent films 1970s German-language films Films directed by Werner Herzog Cruelty to animals Films set in psychiatric hospitals German independent films Films set on islands Films shot in the Canary Islands Works about dwarfism 1970 comedy films 1970 drama films Cockfighting in film 1970s German films Films about disability