Little Dieter Needs To Fly (1997)

"A compassionate and personal story of the brutality and oddity of war...  Jeffrey M. Anderson, Combustible Celluloid
"Extraordinary.  San Francisco Examiner

Editor's Note An extraordinary documentary about an extraordinary man, Werner Herzog's LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY details the life of Dieter Dengler, a survivor of both WWII and Vietnam. Dengler grew up in Germany, and, dreaming of one day flying a plane, left for the US when he was 18, unable to speak English. Soon, he was in the Navy, flying bombing missions over Laos and Vietnam, where his plane was shot down and he was taken prisoner. He and six others escaped the prison, but only he was known to have survived. Herzog turns Dieter's story into something much different than one might expect by putting Dieter back into scenes from his past and recording his amazingly understated reactions. For instance, in Laos, where he was taken prisoner, Herzog binds Dengler's hands and feet as they were in 1966 and uses Vietnamese actors, complete with rifles, to play Viet Cong. It's a startling technique, one that lends this film an intensity and sense of danger that Dengler consistently plays down.

	Andre Singer - Executive Producer
	Dieter Dengler - Featuring
	Eugene Deatrick - Featuring
	Joe Bini, et. al. - Editor
	Lucki Stipetic - Producer
	Peter Zeitlinger - Cinematographer
	Werner Herzog - Narrated By
	Werner Herzog - Director
	Werner Herzog - Writer

Sight and Sound
"[Dengler] is the quintessential Herzogian man -- obsessive, visionary, stubborn, and with an extraordinary will to survive....[A] superb documentary..." 01/01/2008 p.94

Uncut
4 stars out of 5 -- "One of Herzog's signature studies of life lived at the extremes." 02/01/2008 p.112

Chicago Sun-Times 9 of 10
Werner Herzog's "Little Dieter Needs to Fly'' lets Dieter tell his own story, which he does in rushed but vivid English, as if fearful there will not be time enough if he doesn't speak fast. As he talks, Herzog puts him in locations: His American home, his German village of Wildberg, and then the same Laotian jungles where he was shot down...Herzog starts with a balding middle-aged man driving down a country lane in a convertible, and listens, questions and shapes, until the life experience of Dieter Dengler becomes unforgettable. What an astonishing man! we think. But if we were to sit next to him on a plane, we might tell him we had seen his movie, and make a polite comment about it, and go back to our magazine. It takes art to transform someone else's experience into our own. - Roger Ebert