Watch Little Dieter Needs to Fly For Free

To me, this movie is perfection.

hyped garbage

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Although German American pilot Dieter Dengler claims that he is not a hero, his triumphs over tough odds paint a different picture of a man who has vivid memories of his valiant escape during Vietnam war. Director Werner Herzog presents his film with a dual approach in which facts about Germany are also presented in order to depict a small segment of Dieter Dengler's past life. Accurate and detailed description of a war is something a viewer can cherish from this film. For this purpose, Werner Herzog accompanies Dieter Dengler to the places which were part of his harrowing ordeal. It is true that much has been written about "American dream" and its effects on American people. However, Werner Herzog is one of the few acclaimed directors who has shown the real success of an American dream in a film. What makes this film different as well as unique is its depiction of a foreigner making it big in life through his realization of an "American dream". Lastly, love and passion which many people in the world feel for an "American dream" is something which can be influenced by this film.

This is an award-winning documentary that deserves its honors.Dieter Dengler was a boy in Germany when he watched Allied planes shoot up his little village. A fighter zipped past his window, missing it by only a few feet, and the enemy pilot in the open cockpit looked directly over his shoulder at little Dieter, to whom the face was alien, covered with a tight leather helmet and goggles. At that moment, Dieter tells us, he knew he needed to fly.Dieter is now a balding, middle-aged man, apparently living alone in a comfortable house on Mount Tamalpais, just north of San Francisco. He speaks rather quickly and with animation, although with little emotion. As he describes his experiences as a Naval aviator in Vietnam, his capture and imprisonment, and the horrors of his escape, his presentation is that of a tool and die maker explaining the wonderful intricacies of his new horizontal milling machine to an interested visitor.He emigrated to the United States as a teen, worked his way through college, and the Navy taught him to fly Douglas Skyraiders on bombing missions over North Vietnam and Laos. It was in Laos that he was shot down and kept prisoner. After shooting his way out, he made his way barefoot through the jungle, eating rats and so forth, across almost the entirety of Laos until he was down to about 85 pounds and was reduced from walking to crawling, before being accidentally spotted by the Air Force and rescued. No need to go on about the torture, starvation, and leeches.There are a few unusual things about this film. We've seen others like it, both real and fictional, but none, I think, that are quite so matter of fact about such extraordinary human experiences. Not once does Dieter break down or tear up, not even when describing how his escapee companion -- two men who slept under a blanket of mud at night with their arms around each other to keep warm -- has his head chopped off by a Laotian with a bush knife.Nor does Dieter attribute his nearly miraculous survival to anything that might come readily to another kind of mind. He doesn't brag about his own ability to endure, not even subtly. As far as we can tell, he has no religion and never prayed for strength. He dreamed often -- of his village in Germany, of food, of comfortable beds -- but he was never activated by notions of returning to his loved ones or his home.In newsreel footage we see Dieter as a handsome, smiling, affable young Lieutenant (jg) who seems to have an interesting story to tell reporters and debriefers. When the film producers take him back to Southeast Asia, he demonstrates the making of fire from nothing more than the hollow stalk of an old bamboo.It's the closest that the director, Werner Herzog, has come to making a movie that depends on the viewer's emotions for much of its impact. He himself does the occasional narration, and he speaks perfect English with sonorous British grace notes. Listening to him speak, for some reason, reminded me of someone playing a slow, sweet, centuries-old tune on an instrument like a French horn. Herzog isn't much of a moralist. The politics of the Vietnam war play no part in the movie. He seems drawn, though, to stories of people with exceptional, sometimes bizarre visions that lead to quests ending in failure. Here, for once, the quest succeeds.The final shot of the movie shows Dieter walking happily through what he calls "a pilot's dream," a couple of mothballed jet fighters on some isolated desert field. The caption reads: "And Dieter Got What He Wanted, A Planet Covered With Airplanes." In a helicopter shot, the camera rises slowly from the ground and Dieter becomes a tiny figure lost among hundreds or maybe thousands of aircraft stored neatly, wing tip to wing tip, covering several square miles of ground.

Little Dieter Needs To Fly is another in the remarkable body of Werner Herzog's filmic work that is without peer. Having recently rewatched it on DVD, nearly a decade after its initial US release in 1997, it has lost none of its power, and one can see its influence on documentaries as diverse as Herzog's own recent Grizzly Man and Errol Morris's Academy Award winning The Fog Of War. Like the former, it details, in its far too brief 74 minutes, the life of an interesting American. Like the latter it gives a peek at a side of war that few see. Yes, we see the violence and the heroism, but as The Fog Of War brought us into the mind of one of last century's foremost warmongers, this film allows us a peek at the life of a grunt who is captured by the enemy, tortured, and ultimately triumphs. Except, in no way, shape, nor form, is the film as simplistic nor upbeat as my brief description of it. Nor is Little Dieter Needs To Fly's titular subject, Dieter Dengler, and immigrant German who survived the depredations of the Nazis (we find out, as example, that in his hometown, Wildburg, in the Black Forest, his grandfather was the only man not to vote for Hitler, and suffered brutally for that stand) post-World War Two Germany, and his own imprisonment at the hands of the Vietcong, when his Air Force jet was shot down over Laos on February 1st, 1966…. While the title of the film, and the idea of Dengler's passion for becoming a pilot, stirred by the impression Allied fighter planes made on him when they razed his town, as a child, make one believe that Dengler is the central subject of the film, this is not true. The subject is Dengler's survival, or, more precisely, his human will, all human will. The details of Dengler's romantic life are too Hollywood and staid an aspect to interest Herzog. Nor is the fact that he won a Purple Heart, Medal of Honor, the D.F.C., and the Navy Cross. That thing which pushed Dengler to survive so much, and remain such a relatively upbeat man (although there are glimpses of darker sides), is what is at the center of this film, and all of Herzog's canon. Dieter Dengler's 'distant barbaric dream' of his past is fully ripened Herzog Country, and the use of a Madagascan chant, Oay Lahy E, during many jungle scenes, among other excellent touches in the score, show Herzog is, perhaps along with only Martin Scorsese, the best manipulator of image and music in film. Long may he merge!

Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997) **** (out of 4) Powerful documentary from Werner Herzog about the escape of Dieter Dengler from a POW camp was the inspiration for Rescue Dawn. It's very interesting seeing a director make a film off of a documentary he made because you get to see the different ways that both genres can be done by the same mind. I would say this film is a lot more powerful and I say that because it's rather hypnotizing seeing Dieter tell his stories of torture and escape. Dieter goes back to some of the real locations to tell what happened to him and it's quite haunting hearing him say that it's a mystery how he survived all that he went through. Herzog brings his normal flair to the picture by not really doing anything except letting this man tell his story. The stories are at times shocking and at other times inspirational but the film ends with one of the most beautiful scenes from any Herzog film.