Director: Woody Allen
Screenplay: Woody Allen
Starring: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow
Running Time: 72 minutes
Genre: Comedy, mockumentary
The film is structured as a documentary, exploring the phenomenon of Leonard Zelig (Allen), a nondescript individual who develops an ability to take on the personality and even the physical traits of people around him. As the "Human Chameleon" Zelig unwittingly becomes one of the biggest sensations of the 1920s and 30s.
This is one of the most innovative films Allen has made. The film has the appearance and style of the newsreels of the 1920s and 30s, interspersed with interviews from contemporary intellectuals such as Susan Sontag and Saul Bellow. Similar to Forrest Gump (1994), at various points throughout the film the actors are edited into contemporary photographs and footage from the 1920s and 30s enabling Zelig to appear with everyone from F. Scott Fitzgerald, to Charlie Chaplin, to Adolf Hitler. The effects are quite astonishing, looking extremely convincing throughout, and the documentary format works well. The film is pretty funny throughout, and there is a lot of fun to be had with the novelty songs about Zelig at the height of his popularity. Leonard Zelig really just wants to be accepted and loved, but the cost of that is he drowns his own personality and identity to take on those of the people around him, and the film does have a point to make about the dangers of being too eager to be part of the crowd that you lose who you are. One of the problems with the film is that so much of it seems to take second place to the technical aspects. Mia Farrow never really gets to make much of an impression as the kindly psychiatrist who helps Zelig, neither really does Allen as Zelig, who of course is supposed to be kind of a blank slate. It is one of Allen's most impressive films, if not one of his best.
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