Even Dwarfs Started Small

1970

1h 36m

Drama

List

100%

Tomatometer

8 Reviews

76%

Audience Score

5,000+ Ratings

Tormented patients stage a coup at a dismal asylum.

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Vincent Canby

New York Times

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.

Rated: 3/5

May 9, 2005

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Don Druker

Chicago Reader

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.

Jan 1, 2000

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Arthur Ross

Los Angeles Free Press

The product of a rigorous imagination.

Jan 8, 2020

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Dan Jardine

Apollo Guide

Gobsmackingly good. A great and terrible film.

Rated: 93/100

May 1, 2007

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Emanuel Levy

EmanuelLevy.Com

Rated: 4/5

Jul 31, 2005

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Leo Goldsmith

Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Patient and unrelenting, Herzog stages a total deterioration of narrative logic and social norms, as emblematized by a crucified monkey and a cannibalizing chicken.

Apr 23, 2005

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Simon T

Much as I love Herzog's later dramas and documentaries, this aimless and plotless experiment forced me eventually to give up. Whereas masterpieces like Aguirre, Nosferatu and Fitzcarraldo are anchored by mesmerising performances by Klaus Kinski and strong narratives, this self-indulgent story of renegade dwarves is simply a way of using up film stock. Uninvolving, tiresome and dull.

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

03/04/24

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Michael M

This movie portrays a whole lot of straight up animal torture. For your own good, don't watch this film.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

01/21/24

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Brian R

like having a freakish dream except this wastes an 1-1/2 hours of your time. was hoping Mr. Herzog would create a film that could be added to some of his other great works but it wasn't

Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars

12/28/20

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Audience Member

Absolutely dreadful. This could have made an interesting short (as the premise of an all-dwarf film is quite arresting) but watching 90 minutes of cackling dwarfs creating mayhem is enough to try anyone's patience. Still, maybe this is what gave Joe Dante the inspiration for Gremlins so something positive may have come out of it.

Rated 1 out of 5 stars

02/13/23

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Audience Member

This has simply got to be one of the oddest films ever made. It's hilariously unique, establishing some of the running themes in Herzog's succeeding work, and not failing to create a brilliant allegory.

Rated 3.5 out of 5 stars

01/14/23

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Audience Member

Werner Herzog's strange film is often compared to Tod Browning's 1932 classic FREAKS, but the similarities stop there. Herzog's film is an oddity in itself, and unlike the cast of FREAKS, never manages to recognize its own stars as normal people.

Rated 2 out of 5 stars

02/27/23

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Werner Herzog

Director

Helmut Doring

Hombré

Gerd Gickel

Pepe

Paul Glauer

Erzieher

Hertel Minkner

Chicklets

Alfredo Piccini

Anselmo

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Synopsis

Tormented patients stage a coup at a dismal asylum.

Director: Werner Herzog
Screenwriter: Werner Herzog
Genre: Drama
Original Language: German
Release Date (Streaming): Feb 15, 2017
Runtime: 1h 36m

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