Plot Summary

 Soldiers sent to a remote Greek island to recuperate and take care of an abandoned ammunitions dump slowly loses their grip on reality in this debut from German auteur Werner Herzog.

Werner Herzog made his directing debut with this meditation on war and madness. During World War II, three German soldiers--one of them wounded--take refuge on a small Greek island that remains relatively untouched by the fighting. The boredom of their isolated post and meaningless assignment leads to an inevitable crumbling of sanity. Each begins to construct elaborate strategies to dispel the boredom and keep the mental horrors of the war at bay. The psychology of the men and their trying situation are compellingly portrayed through their methods of occupying themselves, from building cockroach-catching contraptions to translation of ancient Greek texts on local church walls to the construction of bombs from the detritus of the ammunitions dump. SIGNS OF LIFE was Herzog’s first feature film, made at the age of 19, and thus is perhaps his most conventional, sticking to a traditional psychological drama format. However, the idiosyncrasies and dramatic invention that would follow in his career are present in seed form in the director’s scrupulous attention to the minutiae of the characters' descent into disturbance as well as in the role played by the astounding Greek landscape.

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Original Theatrical Trailer
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