Zelig
Director: Woody Allen. Cast: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Ellen Garrison, Stephanie
Farrow, Sol Lomita. Screenplay: Woody Allen.
The curse of filmmakers as consistently ingenious as Woody Allen is that when they make low-scale, easy
charmers like Zelig, you can't help but wish they had gone a little further. In truth,
Zelig, at a mere 79 minutes, probably exists at the precise length at which its laughs are still
reliable but the central gimmick—that Leonard Zelig, played by Allen, was a now-forgotten media
sensation of the 1920s and 1930s who popped up in a whole swath of landmark curtural events—does not yet
wear thin. Zelig's seeming omnipresence in circumstances ranging from the Yankees' dugout (batting behind
Gehrig) to affluent parties attended by the Fitzgeralds to, perhaps most memorably, a Nazi rally, is
further complicated by what the fake-documentary perspective of the film names a "medical phenomenon," by
which Zelig, "The Human Chameleon," begins to register physically the defining ethnic or outward
characteristics of whomever he is closest to in a room. Thus we are also treated to scrumptious
eye-candy ploys like Allen made up as a Chinese restuaranteur, or a scat trumpet-player in a Harlem
nightclub, though the narrator comments that experiments between Zelig and women or animal companions
yielded no similar effects. Perhaps Woody Allen in drag was too much for us to hope for; or, more
likely, too much for us to stand.
In any event, this slender outing—the only other primary character is Mia Farrow's Dr. Eudora Fletcher,
who is determined to prove that Zelig's condition is psychical, not morphological, and thus wins an
audience with Freud and other "contemporaries"—is kept as nimbly and lively as one of Forrest Gump's
champion ping-pong balls, especially since Allen's superimpositions of himself into archival footage are
consistently wittier and less obvious than the scenarios in which Gumpmeister Robert Zemeckis
placed his own picaresque. It also bears mentioning that none of Allen's gags, not even the climactic
Hitler rally (which is uproarious), smacks of the kind of bad taste of Forrest Gump's cheeky appearance
at George Wallace's one-man effort to keep the University of Alabama segregated. And the technical
wizardry of Zelig extends far beyond the jerry-rigging required to make Zelig believably
"historic"; the brilliant cinematographer Gordon Willis (he of the Godfather trilogy) finally and
deservedly copped his first Oscar nomination for his uncanny simulation of silent-era flickery black and
white film exposure. The photography alone makes Zelig a great treat to watch, as well as
further proof that Allen's humor and pop accessibility, particularly in projects like this, belies an
incredibly sophisticated craftsmanship in even the technical aspects of his films.
All of that said, Zelig, as most gimmick pictures are, is a relatively self-contained affair that
dissipates rather quickly in the memory and certainly yields none of the breathtaking moments, comedic or
otherwise, of a bona fide Allen triumph like Hannah and Her Sisters, Annie Hall, or
Manhattan. There is barely a thing to be said against Zelig except that, much like Allen's
equally gag-driven What's Up, Tiger Lily, the pleasures of its comedy are
hampered by the fact that, while his other films are unimaginable coming from any other director, this
film could have been conceived and delivered by more than a few other filmmakers if the premise had
struck them first. It's as though Allen himself had the Chameleon Complex and he spent a couple of months
around Mel Brooks. Zelig doesn't require or receive the unique touches of genius that Allen's more
fleshed-out projects exhibit so often that, as I said earlier, his fans are spoiled when he is merely a
good filmmaker, not a great one. Zelig is unimpeachable entertainment, and has infinitely more
laughs than the rather monotonous Tiger Lily, but it's a good evening's fun that will most likely
have been forgotten by morning. Grade: B
- Academy Award Nominations:
- Best Cinematography: Gordon Willis
- Best Costume Design: Santo Loquasto
- Golden Globe Nominations:
- Best Picture (Musical/Comedy)
- Best Actor (Musical/Comedy): Woody Allen