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EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL
A strange, anarchic masterpiece from German filmmaker Werner Herzog, who was mining a vein similar to the films of David Lynch and Harmony Korine years before those guys came into vogue. It’s disturbing, yes, but also curiously fascinating and addictive.
The Package
EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL (AUCH ZWERGE HABEN KLEIN ANGEFANGEN) was
completed in 1968, and in retrospect can be viewed as an oblique commentary on
the revolutionary fervor of the time. The uprisings of the late sixties
ultimately gave way to apathy and conservatism, so it seems appropo that the
revolutionaries in this film are dwarfs who constantly find themselves stymied
by things like cars, beds and doorknobs, all too big for them to properly use,
which results in an extremely half-assed revolt.
Everyone
in this film, you see, is a dwarf, yet the props and décor are all normal
sized. It was the first time such a stunt had been attempted since the 1938
all-midget western THE TERROR OF TINY TOWN, although a more pertinent comparison
would be Todd Browning’s FREAKS, an admitted inspiration. Beyond that the
oppressiveness of EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL was inspired by the making of Werner
Herzog’s previous film, the eccentric documentary FATA MORGANA, during which
Herzog and his crewmembers were interned in an African prison and subjected to
beatings and starvation.
Who is Werner Herzog? He was one of the guiding lights
of the “New German Cinema” of the seventies along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder
and Wim Wenders, although Herzog’s approach to moviemaking was entirely
different than those of Fassbinder or Wenders, or for that matter anyone. An
extremely prolific filmmaker, Herzog creates deeply idiosyncratic cinematic
meditations like AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD, THE ENIGMA OF KASPER HAUSER,
NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE, STROZEK
and FITZCARRALDO. I consider EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL, his second feature, to
be one of Herzog’s finest films, not to mention one of his most underrated. It
was heavily reviled upon its initial release (Herzog reportedly received death
threats every night it played) and inexplicably vanished from circulation for
decades, at least until Anchor Bay’s thrice-welcome 1999 DVD release.
The Story
In the midst of a godforsaken windswept desert, a bunch of dwarfs interned
in a secluded insane asylum brutally rebel against the headmaster (a little
person himself). The latter reacts by shutting himself in an upper room of the
asylum along with one of the rebel dwarfs, who he ties to a chair. In the
courtyard below the dwarfs gleefully engage in subversive acts that include
attempting to force one of their number to have sex with another (the would-be
aggressor can’t manage to get up on the bed), rifling through the headmaster’s
porn stash and torturing two blind dwarfs who swing sticks at their unseen
tormentors, which inevitably come to include each other.
Amidst this orgy of destruction the dwarfs expand the scope of their
rebellion to include nature itself: they uproot a palm tree, burn flowers, kill
a pig, crucify a monkey and use live chickens to bombard the headmaster.
Eventually the latter goes insane and escapes his confines, but winds up
hypnotized by a tree as around him the madness continues and an errant dwarf
laughs himself to death.
The Direction
EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL was the second feature film for the twentyish
Werner Herzog, and represented a huge leap for a filmmaker whose first and third
features (SIGNS OF LIFE, 1968, and AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD, 1972) both
contained fairly straightforward narratives. DWARFS, by contrast, is wildly
anarchic and abstract in its construction.
Herzog at the time was primarily known for making
documentaries, and while DWARFS, with its seemingly pell-mell cavalcade of
destruction, often has the undisciplined feel of a documentary, it was
apparently carefully designed and scripted. That’s evident in the camerawork,
which is always shot at the eye-level of its diminutive subjects, thus making
the surroundings seem alien. The film’s music score is equally innovative,
consisting of a young girl singing a German folk song with recording done
(Herzog claims) in a cave by the filmmaker himself, which makes for a darkly
comedic and even haunting accompaniment to the oft-surreal visuals.
The black and white photography by Thomas Munch
contributes immeasurably to the film’s overall effect. Herzog always was
primarily concerned with images, and in DWARFS he and Munch impart sights as
striking and nightmarish as just about any you’ll see: chickens cannibalizing
one another, piglets desperately sucking at the teats of their dead mother, a
driverless car sputtering in an endless circle, blind dwarfs in overalls and
aviator goggles swinging large sticks at invisible opponents, a box of dead
insects dressed in miniature wedding attire, and the unforgettable final shot of
a dwarf standing in place and laughing maniacally.
But for all its virtues the film is deeply troubling, and not just because
of the all the onscreen mayhem. Its portrayal of dwarfs as objects of
existential horror verges on exploitive, and ultimately isn’t that far removed
from the notorious finale of Michael Winner’s seventies sleaze-fest THE SENTINAL,
wherein real-life human oddities portrayed Hell-spawned demons. Then again
though, not too many films then or now are peopled entirely by dwarfs, and nor
are there many films as rich as disquieting as this one, exploitive though it
may be.
Vital Statistics
EVEN DWARFS STSRTED SMALL (AUCH
ZWERGE HABEN KLEIN ANGEFANGEN)
Werner Herzog Filmproduktion
Director: Werner Herzog
Producer: Francisco Ariza
Screenplay: Werner Herzog
Cinematography: Thomas Mauch
Editing: Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus
Cast: Helmut Doring, Gerd Gickel, Paul Glauer, Erna Gshwendtner, Gisela Hertwig,
Gerhard Marz, Hertel Minkner, Alfredo Piccini, Gertraud Piccini, Brigitte Saar,
Marianne Saar, Erna Smolarz, Lajos Zsarnoczay