Leonard Zelig (Woody Allen) is a baffling psychological case for doctors at Manhattan Hospital in the early 1920s, when it is discovered that he can resemble whoever he is near.
Before he is finally committed to the state mental hospital, Zelig poses as a Long Island aristocrat, a Chicago gangster and a black jazz musician.
The son of a Jewish immigrant actor, Zelig is no mere master of disguise. He has absolutely no identity of his own and actually transforms himself bodily to look like the people he is around: when he’s near fat men, his stomach swells; when he’s near Irishmen, his hair turns red, and his nose turns up . . .
Dubbed “The Human Chameleon” by doctors and the press, Zelig becomes an overnight sensation.
Like almost everything else in the 1920s, Zelig’s condition becomes an object of roaring good fun as games, dances, and songs appear by the score.
He is featured in newsreels in movie houses from coast to coast and is on page one of every New York newspaper every night for a good long time.
While everyone else is busy enjoying Zelig, psychiatrist Dr Eudora Fletcher (Mia Farrow) is fascinated by his case and sees curing him as her road to renown. She takes him to her country retreat and succeeds in making him into his own man, which leads to complications of its own.
While she’s at it, she falls in love with him.
In classic Woody Allen fashion, Zelig is a movie made good by a masterfully absurd story, and made great by exceptional filmmaking.
Allen creates a false documentary that is convincing and seamless, combining stock black-and-white footage from the age’s newsreels with phoney footage that’s been aged to look like the real thing.
In doctored stills, Zelig is pictured with famous performers, playwrights and sportsmen of the era.
He makes an appearance with two presidents, the pope, and even with Adolf Hitler, and to heighten the illusion of historical documentary, Allen intersperses interviews (in colour) with contemporaries of Zelig and with literary and psychoanalytic luminaries – including Saul Bellow and Bruno Bettelheim – playing themselves.
It’s very clever – though not incredibly funny – but without Zelig there would have been no Forrest Gump(1994).
Leonard Zelig
Woody Allen Dr Eudora Nesbitt Fletcher
Mia Farrow Narrator
Patrick Horgan Dr Sindell
John Buckwalter Glandular Diagnosis Doctor
Marvin Chatinover Mexican Food Doctor
Stanley Swerdlow Dr Birsky
Paul Nevens Hypodermic Doctor
Howard Erskine Experimental Drugs Doctor
George Hamlin Martin Geist
Sol Lomita Sister Ruth
Mary Louise Wilson Actress Fletcher
Marianne Tatum Actor Doctor
Charles Denny Actor Koslow
Michael Kell Actor Zelig
Garrett Brown Miss Baker
Sharon Ferrol-Young Charles Koslow
Richard Litt Martinez
Dimitri Vassilopoulos Paul Deghuee
John Rothman Meryl Fletcher
Stephanie Farrow Dr Fletcher’s Mother
Jean Trowbridge Lita Fox
Deborah Rush Lita’s Lawyer
Stanley Simmonds Zelig’s Lawyer
Robert Berger Helen Gray
Jeanine Jackson Zelig’s Wife
Erma Campbell Carter Dean
Bernie Herold
Director
Woody Allen
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The son of a Jewish immigrant actor, Zelig is no mere master of disguise. He has absolutely no identity of his own and actually transforms himself bodily to look like the people he is around: when he’s near fat men, his stomach swells; when he’s near Irishmen, his hair turns red, and his nose turns up . . .
While everyone else is busy enjoying Zelig, psychiatrist Dr Eudora Fletcher (Mia Farrow) is fascinated by his case and sees curing him as her road to renown. She takes him to her country retreat and succeeds in making him into his own man, which leads to complications of its own.
He makes an appearance with two presidents, the pope, and even with Adolf Hitler, and to heighten the illusion of historical documentary, Allen intersperses interviews (in colour) with contemporaries of Zelig and with literary and psychoanalytic luminaries – including Saul Bellow and Bruno Bettelheim – playing themselves.
