Two weeks from now, you may or may not notice that a guy named Woody
Allen will have a new movie in theatres called Café Society and an older title new on Blu-ray called Zelig
(1983). Before the latter movie opened 33 years ago this July, the word
zelig was defined as a male given name derived from the Germanic meaning
“blessed” or the Yiddish meaning “happy.” After the happily blessed,
technically audacious and dazzlingly unique comedy gem arrived, the word zelig
took on two more definitions: 1) an ordinary person who adapts to fit into any
situation and/or imitate anyone they’re near; and 2) someone having a
ubiquitous, often inconspicuous presence. They’re all part of the Zelig
mystique: Leonard Zelig, the “chameleon man” subject of this compact
(78-minute) mock-documentary, is a marvelous starting point which, per Jack
Kroll of Newsweek, “allows Woody to
satirize all sorts of things, from nostalgia, psychoanalysis and The American
Dream to critics, himself and much more….His Zelig is a romantic who
desperately wants the supreme cocktail of realism mixed with glory – the Great
Gatsby as schlemiel.” Leonard is the centerpiece of a fable constructed from an
extraordinary assemblage of newsreel footage, awesome still photos, “expert”
historian interviewees and cinematographic wizardry (marking the first time
Gordon Willis, who’d already shot The
Godfather, The Godfather Part II, All the President’s Men, Annie Hall and Manhattan at this point, received an
Academy Award® nomination). Eleven years later, Forrest Gump would straddle the globe and show up at all manner of
historic events courtesy of computer-generated innovations, but Zelig
would do so in analog fashion – and no less amazingly. Just as Jesse
Eisenberg’s Bobby in Café Society
tries to navigate the slippery slope of celebrity fascination and personal
advancement in the contrasting swank and swinging environs of New York and
Hollywood, Leonard Zelig wanders his own singular maze of conformist compulsion
in order to achieve the same goal as Bobby: being loved for himself. “Allen is
sometimes taken for granted, and Zelig is a case in point,” David
Evanier wrote in Woody: The Biography. “The
film alone would have established any other director-writer as a filmmaker of
the first rank. But in Allen’s case, it is quickly submerged in the flood of
his output, future and past fllms, that come at us with such speed that it is
difficult to digest them and place them in proper perspective.” But those who
consider Zelig (also starring Mia Farrow as Zelig’s miracle-worker
psychologist and outfitted with a captivating collage score of docu-flavored
music and popular standards by Dick Hyman) just a shiny bauble and not a
pantheon masterwork with autobiographical undertones and acute social impact
should really look again and look closely, just as The New Republic’s Stanley Kauffman (whom Evanier called “one of
Allen’s toughest critics”) did when he wrote: “The skill is so clever as to
approach brilliance. I ignore dozens of gifted artists and technicians when I
single out Santo Loquasto for costume designs that combine accuracy with
slyness. Allen, as a director, shows a keen eye for the way people looked, and
thought they looked in the period: the way they glanced at cameras, posed
themselves for photographs, or invented ‘business’ for newsreels. Behind all
this is not only a careful study of period materials, which many directors have
done, but a sensitivity to cultural change. Allen, looking back from the
present, perceives that this moment is a point of transition from the film
camera as an ornament of civilization to a central component of consciousness.”
Twilight Time invites you to put down your cell phones and go chameleon with Zelig
on hi-def Blu-ray July 12. Preorders open tomorrow, Wednesday June 29.