- Little Dieter Needs To Fly

As the documentary begins, we hear Werner Herzog's voice telling us that there are events in some people's lives that haunt them forever, but that if we pass these people on the street or in their car, we would never know it, for they appear normal. That in part is what this movie is about. It's also about how a dream might come to us and take hold of us, and how if we are determined to make the dream come true we can never know where it will lead, just as we can never fully understand why the dream came to us in the first place. We first see Dieter in his house atop a hill outside of San Francisco (he has lived in America for 40 years; the film is in English, there are no subtitles). He talks about how important doors are to him, that he can never take them for granted because when he was in the prison camp he was not able to open or close any doors. He talks about always having plenty of food in the house, even storing extra in the basement, because he never wants to go hungry again. Then we are in Germany, in the small town where he grew up. He watched planes flying over his town as a boy during World War II. One flew very close to his upstairs window and from that moment he knew he needed to fly. He says he didn't want to go to war, he only wanted to fly. Yet the airplanes he saw as a child, the ones that created the dream in him, were war planes. This is not a simple story. Dieter came to America when he was 18 years old, with no money, speaking only a few words of English, and almost immediately joined the Air Force. But he never got near an airplane. Over time as he learned how things work, he figured out what he needed to do. He moved to California and went to college, living out of a VW van. Then he joined the Navy where at last he learned to fly. He was sent to Vietnam and soon thereafter was shot down over Laos. To give you some idea of the structure of the film, it is essentially the story of where Dieter's desire to fly led him, told more or less chronologically beginning in his childhood up to the present. We don't learn anything else about Dieter or his life. The story is completely focussed on this one aspect of his life. And Werner Herzog mostly lets Dieter tell his own story. When he talks about his childhood, he is in Germany, talking and showing us around the town. When he talks about his time in the prison camp, the filming takes place in an unnamed Asian country (the production notes at the end say it was indeed Laos). There is some reenactment, such as Dieter having his hands tied behind his back and walking through jungle. This is the sort of thing that could go very wrong in a movie, but in Werner Herzog's hands it works beautifully. It's not clear whether the villagers taking part in the reenactments know what is going on, or what they think. It's not clear whether being there and reexperiencing these events is helping Dieter chase away his demons or making matters worse. All this adds to the dreamlike and mythic quality of the movie. This is a very big story. And what makes the movie so successful, is Dieter himself. He is a master storyteller. At home in San Francisco he is sad and haunted. But in the jungle he is filled with energy and there is a sense of urgency to his speaking, as if he realizes how much he needs to tell his story. I could not take my eyes from the screen and could have listened to him talk for hours. And talk he does. About the three week walk to the prison camp, about conditions in the camp, about their plans to escape. There is great attention to detail, such as showing how they got out of their handcuffs, and showing a map of the camp to describe how their plan was to work. As harrowing as the details of the camp were, even more difficult to hear was the long walk barefoot through the jungle after the escape. Dieter sits cross-legged on the dock of the Mekong River, recounting this journey, quietly but forcefully telling his story. I promise that this will make your heart ache. Don't look for any reflection on the events. Never does Werner Herzog ask Dieter whether he is sorry he pursued his dream with such single-minded determination. We are left to draw our own conclusions. Some of the timing of events is unclear. We're not sure how long he was in Vietnam before he got shot down, nor how long he was held prisoner, but it seems to be less than six months. We're told that he took early retirement from the Navy but we're not told when he retired or whether he continued to serve in Vietnam after he was rescued. But these are not criticisms. This movie is made up of complex levels of dreams within dreams and these slight omissions add to that mood. Herzog has done a brilliant job of putting together an amazing story. This is one of the finest movies I've seen in a long, long time.

Werner Herzogs's War documentary, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, is an interview with a provocative background of film imagery. The subject is the German-American pilot, Dieter Dengler, and his experience as a prisoner of war in the jungles of Vietnam that he explains was like that of being in a dream. And German filmmaker, Werner Herzog, has crafted a film-retelling of Dieter's story that suggests the presence of Dieter's subconscious world of dreams. The documentary looks naturalistic, in that parts of the documentary include authentic film footage from the Vietnam conflict and much of the interview is filmed in the actual jungle setting of Vietnam and Dieter's captivity is re-enacted with real Vietnamese people who play along as his tormentors. But artistically, Herzog's film makes the natural world into an abstract and challenges our perceptions of reality. The Vietnamese folk music is juxtaposed against images of villages being napalm-bombed. The singing voice, in the context of Dieter's experience that he called an "abstract world" becomes an angry, buzzing sound, as if Dieter's memory and narrative are unable to process his deepest nightmares. Herzog's film images and sounds are linked organically to the story, but his techniques assert that reality exists below the surface of rational thought. Film images of a hungry bear and a corpse-like dummy pilot become metaphors for death that function as instruments of film poetry. The hungry bear that pursued him, Dieter believed, represented death, which he says, intended to eat him. The U.S. NAVY's archival film footage of the dummy pilot being disassembled, in the context of the story about a pilot who is tortured physically and spiritually, also becomes an abstract of death, a plastic symbol, a corpse-like, hollow, cannibalized pilot. And the buzzing sound of the Vietnamese folk music returns later when he speaks of his nightmare in which "the entire navy" is looking for him. The buzzing music is juxtaposed with the absurd image of a single canoe, filled with quickly rowing Vietnamese villagers--and he becomes a man tormented in nightmarish isolation. When Dieter explained his rescue, he said the smell of gasoline awakened him to reality. The ethereal substance that produces vapor mirage and napalm death and that awakened him was emitting from the engine of a U.S. spotter plane. The strange and otherworldly sound of the Asian folksong became the voice of Dieter's inner demons. And the theme of human endurance becomes ambiguous, as Dieter's survival, his triumph, is linked to the misery of nightmares. At the end of the segment called "Punishment," Dieter reflects on his experience and says, "The only heroes are dead," and also states, "Death did not want me." Dieter said that his experience as an impoverished and suffering German boy in a bombed-out, post-world-war Germany prepared him for suffering, and Herzog opens the film with actual footage of the napalm bombing of Vietnamese villages and suggests that the Vietnamese guns, which swivel and shoot into the sky, are mute in comparison to Dieter's bombs. We wonder whether Dieter believes the torture he endured was deserved and is full of acceptance for his "punishment". Even years later, Dieter's past and present are linked. Night is still a haunting boundary against his daytime reality. His tattoo "dream" of white horses pursuing him is only realized in the Mott Davis Cemetery for aging, decommissioned fighter planes, primed with white paint.

Not very many pilots make it out of a Laotian POW camp alive. Dieter is Navy!! Yeh!! He is a A-1 Skyraider driver who was captured on a secret mission over Laos and North Vietnam. He flew off a carrier deck into the secret war in Laos. This video is an interview story by the man himself, Dieter Dengler. It is autobiographical using movie film shot in WW2 Germany, aboard ship, and over Laos. It uses natives of Laos to explain his capture and life in the POW camp. This is a first hand description of Dengler's crash, evasive escape, capture, life in a POW camp, escape. survival, and rescue. It is an outstanding documentary of the only flier in the Viet Nam War to escape from a POW camp and live to tell about it. Viewing this video prepares you for seeing the movie Rescue Dawn.

I knew Dieter because my Finnish wife and his Finnish girl friend were both Pan Am Stewardess. Often times they would fly trips together and be gone for 5 to 8 days somewhere in the world. Dieter and I would team up and have dinner together during these times. I lived Sausalito and Dieter was close by. Dieter was flying for TWA at the time and would bid his trips so that he would have 2 or 3 weeks off at a time. Then Dieter would take off alone to the Amazon River, Himalaya Mountains or some exotic area and integrate himself into the environment. Dieter told me he would get a boat and cruise down the Amazon all alone. His stories were very interesting. Eventually he took a extended medical leave from TWA because of his painful back. Dieter was very proud of the German Restaurant he owned near the top of Mt. Tam in Mill Valley! Dieter was a truly incredible person so sad to see him gone......

Werner Herzog is a brilliant director and I would thoroughky recommend this film and any of Werner's films to you if you enjoy a well crafted documentary. This director never gets in the way of his subject.

Nach langer Suche ist es mir gelungen diesen Film käuflich zu erwerben.In Elektronik-Märkten konnte man mir nicht weiterhelfen. Der Film wurde nur ein mal auf ARTE in der langen und einmal in der gekürzten Fassung auf ARD oder ZDF gezeigt.Anscheinend hatten diese Sender nur die Erstaustrahlungsrechte.Eine Kopie hätte mich ein Vermögen gekostet. Erst nach Recherchen auf You Tube,Wikipedia und Amazon haben es mir ermöglicht diesen spannenden Film aus England zu beziehen. Eine Interessante Geschichte und ein aufregendes Leben.Leider endete es tragisch,was man nur auf Wikipedia erfährt. Die Lieferung erfolgte pünktlich und es gab keine Beanstandungen. Einziges Manko: da der Film vom deutschen Regiseur Werner Herzog gedreht wurde,wünschte man sich auch deutsche Untertitel.Die gibt es leider nicht,sondern waren nur bei der Ausstrahlung im deutschen TV zu sehen.Wer aber Englisch halbwegs versteht,kann der Geschichte folgen.Für mich einer der spannendsten Dokumentarfilme.

This is a documentary about Dieter Dengler a German-American navy pilot shot down in Vietnam. This film is a great example of Herzog's work, with Dieter return back to Vietnam to explain the story of his capture and most importantly his escape.

Pure joy in a box. An extraordinary man's amazing story. inspirational and important.

Dokumentation wurde von Werner Herzog gedreht, da er den Spielfilm zu diesem Stoff nicht finanzieren konnte. Erst später konnte er den Stoff unter dem Titel Rescue dawn mit dem Schauspieler Christopher Bale verfilmen. Der Protagonist des Films, ein Deutscher, der als Pilot der US-Air-Force über Laos wrd. des Vietnamkrieges abgeschossen wurde, erzählt darin seine Erlebnisse als Gefangener der Vietkong und seiner abenteuerlichen Flucht mit anschließender Rettung durch andere US-Piloten. Die Schilderung der Leiden wrd. der Gefangenschaft sind sehr intensiv. Die Dokumentation ist aus meiner Sicht interessanter als der Spielfilm, weil der Protagonist seine Erfahrungen und Gefühle wrd. der Ereignisse viel unmittelbarer schildern kann als der Spielfilm.