Zelig
by Woody Allen
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: John Buckwalter, Mia Farrow, Woody AllenDirector: Woody Allen
Brand: Twentieth Century Fox
Writer: Woody Allen
Producer: Charles H. Joffe
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Format: Anamorphic, Black & White, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 79 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2001-11-06
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of Zelig
Movie Review: Mia Farrow's finest
Summary: 5 Stars
While seconding the five star reviews here, I must ask you please to permit me to suggest you view this film in a double feature with Broadway Danny Rose to see the spectrum of Farrow's collaboration with Mr. Allen. I confess I have not seen their later film Hannah and Her Sisters, but hear that also reflects the evolution of their somewhat fruitful relationship, although after its ultimate and excruciating tragic ending in litigation and merciless custody battles.
In any case, kindly view this film in relationship with Broadway Danny Rose. Both Farrow and Allen remain in view almost constantly throughout both films, and yet we might call Rose Allen's film, as she remains hidden behind a stone face and large dark glasses as a gun moll throughout, until her ultimate catharsis, delivered with the same statuesque face while Allen shows his chops extremely well (her few deviations from the hard character might be when her glasses fall during the hilarious wriggling scene, and when he praises her jungle concept for interior decoration, the first to do so, at which point she grows visibly vulnerable and the ice maiden for one instant melts).
But we have not come to praise Danny Rose but to bury him. This here is clearly Farrow's movie, and displays brilliantly the full spectrum of her acting ability. It is very real, and very good. Check her character's quick peeks at her brother's camera when the hypnotized Zelig admits her wants to go to bed with her. Check her constant humility and strong perseverance amongst the really off the wall medical experts, all male, at a time when it was nearly impossible for a woman to be accepted as a peer in the psychiatric profession.
Allen does the best he can with a difficult character, letting the wardrobe do the acting and playing a real jerk who cannot just relax and be himself, and when he does only offends. His character is not designed to be very likeable; Allen has given a great prize however to Farrow with this role, which when seen in a double feature with BDR as mentioned above, really makes you appreciate her perhaps for the first time as a gifted and intelligent actor.
It is a great tragedy for our cinema these two very gifted and talented and creative people could not negotiate a longer artisitc life together than these two retro black and white films. Neither would hit these heights again, not for all the Small Time Crooks or The Purple Rose of Cairo or The Curse of the Jade Scorpion or can watch; you might as well give up and get out Take the Money and Run - Uncut (Widescreen Edition), another example of a Woody Allen mock-documentary delivered in the nicotine stained, earnest voice of a late fifties announcer, and have a good laugh.
Meanwhile, please forgive this meditation on the Tragedy of Farrow and Allen. Zelig is marvelous and subtle. Like James Joyce's Nausicaa episode in Ulysses (Gabler Edition), it takes awhile to remember you are experiencing a parody, a brilliant parody faithful to the form while mocking its superficiality and inevitably erroneous nature. In fact it is so faithful to the form that the narrating voice cannot be replaced; the narrator is an essential actor in this tale, as is the chorus of narrators who take over James JOyce's Ulysses, and thus you will not find here a French or Spanish soundtrack as on other Allen films, but only subtitles, reasonably well done.
Of the two I prefer Broadway Danny Rose with its evangelical message of Acceptance, Forgiveness and Love (as Rose continually repeats: "without meaning to be didatic nor facetious"). This film explicitly states that Zelig's conformism inevitably leads to totalitarian fascism, and this also is a message we must never forget.
I wish that Farrow and Allen might have been permitted to accept, forgive and to love, and to continue producing great cinema, the only ones apparently that Allen put all of his great and compassionate heart and considerable and serious mind into, yet let's be thankful we have these two, and see them again. Play It Again, Sam.
Summary of Zelig
Mr. Personality? Or Mr. Personality disorder? Find out in Woody Allen's madcap mockumentary about an identity crisis of hilarious proportions! Thematically intricate, technically complex and filled with some of the most astonishing special effects ever, Zelig is "pure magic" (Newsweek)! Nominated* for two OscarsÂ(r), this "work of breathtaking virtuosity" (Playboy) isfurther proof that Allen "is the premier American filmmaker of his day" (The New York Times)! Leonard Zelig (Allen) is a social quick-change artist whose neurotic insecurity forces him to mimicmentally and physicallywhomever he's with. Treated by Dr. Eudora Fletcher (Farrow), Zelig is slowly cured, and in the process goes from side-show freak to national celebrity to Eudoras fiancĂ(c)! But when misdeeds from Zelig's multiple-personality past start to surface (larceny, bigamy and an unauthorized appendectomy), the human chameleon is on the run again, and Eudora must search the world over to find and save the only man who's every man she's ever wanted!Similar DVD Movies
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