Cheap Zelig (DVD) (Woody Allen, Mia Farrow) (Woody Allen) Price

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Customer Reviews of Zelig

Allen's Brillant Mockumentary
Zelig, the Woody Allen film that time almost forgot, is one of his 10 best. The story is well explained by other reviewers. Nevertheless, the DVD (without any extras except a fascinating trailer) is superior. The grainy film stock and sound are excellent. The movie is a timely today as it was in 1983. A fascinating film from a variety of perspectives. It was a painstaking labor of love that really addresses the need for love, assimilation, and life in the 1920s or 30s. A superior film, well worth the 15 bucks.

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Amusing and Profound
Zelig is one of Woody Allen's most overlooked films. It was filmed in a black and white documentary-style, but it's pure fiction. Zelig is set in the 1930's where Leonard grows up in a New York Jewish family living above a bowling alley, where ironically, the bowling alley complains of their noise. Leonard had developed a low self-esteem from a harsh upbrining, and so, when ridiculed at a fateful party for not having read Moby Dick, he begins his chameleon-like transformations to become whomever is around him.

This movie is loaded with metaphors of 2nd-generation immigrant assimilation and the draw of fascism (Leonard at one point, though Jewish, finds himself morphed into a Nazi). Mia Farrow is charming and believably professional as Leonard's psychiatrist who tries to coax out his true self.

Throughout Zelig, commentary is provided by many leading intellectuals of the 80's, including World of Our Fathers author Irving Howe, cerebral giant Susan Sontag, and author Saul Bellow, all done in the style as if they were commenting on the phenomenon of a real person.

I highly recommend this film...it manages to find that perfect Woody Allen balance between amusing and profound.

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I've always loved this little gem of a film
Some critics said it was too long, and the joke ran thin. To me that describes Forrest Gump. Some critics thought it was a no-concept movie. To me that describes Forrest Gump. To me this is Woody as a virtuoso filmmaker, though not the sort that Tarentino is pegged. The film makes a very true point about fame, about nostalgia, and most of all about conformity in a world that's always proud to show off its nonconformity (note the opening montage about how this was "the jazz age") but which is at bottom hopelessly conformist. Forrest Gump, with its aw-shucks philosophy and cliche-embedded script, didn't dare tackle such weighty issues. But this movie does. But if you don't GET them, as many critics didn't judging from the reviews, this film will to you seem too long. My biggest complaint is that maybe it's actually too short. I would have liked to see some of its themes explored more--admittedly tricky in the narrow confines Allen imposed on himself with his documentary structure.

Here Allen runs the range of tricks to film, but they're not computer tricks (exactly). To age his film he actually scuffs it. To achieve the sound of tinny 1920s sound he records his pop songs (wonderful parodies of the real music of the time) on authentic 1920s equipment. Most of all, in sort of a post-modernist irony that is currently so hip but was fresh in 1983, he features interviews with trendy intellectuals who both reinforce and parody their academic personas by appearing on camera.

Unlike Spinal Tap, which was sometimes a little too broad in its humor (much as I love that movie) and unlike Bob Roberts, which gave us "offscreen" conversations we could plainly hear (from people who wouldn't be body-miked in real life) just to extend the narrative, this movie to me strikes the perfect of rabid satire and just-bare plausibility. Unfortunately, Woody's DVDs tend to be skimpy on extras--director's commentary would be nice, or maybe a "how they did it" documentary. But Woody these days is about as socialable as a hermit crab. He's also not making films this good anymore. Pity, because no one else does comedy quite the way he does--or did.