Zelig 1983 123movies

Watch: Zelig 1983 123movies, Full Movie Online – Fictional documentary about the life of human chameleon Leonard Zelig, a man who becomes a celebrity in the 1920s due to his ability to look and act like whoever is around him. Clever editing places Zelig in real newsreel footage of Woodrow Wilson, Babe Ruth, and others..
Plot: Fictional documentary about the life of human chameleon Leonard Zelig, a man who becomes a celebrity in the 1920s due to his ability to look and act like whoever is around him. Clever editing places Zelig in real newsreel footage of Woodrow Wilson, Babe Ruth, and others.
Smart Tags: #mockumentary #celebrity #physical_transformation #1920s #psychiatrist #missing_person #jew #hypnotism #disappearance #directed_by_star #therapy #character_name_in_title #title_spoken_by_character #man_wears_eyeglasses #schizophrenia #reference_to_moby_dick_the_novel #wedding #newsreel #chameleon #1930s #reference_to_f._scott_fitzgerald

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Ratings:

	7.7/10 Votes: 42,377
	97% | RottenTomatoes
	N/A | MetaCritic
	N/A Votes: 724 Popularity: 8.452 | TMDB

Reviews:

Leonard Zelig is a “human chameleon,” but Zelig the film doesn’t stop at mimicry. Indeed, this fictional documentary written, directed, and starring Woody Allen differentiates between imitation and parody the same way Hitchcock differentiated between action and suspense.

For example, the protagonist’s parents used to punish him by locking him in a dark closet. If that were it, the film would simply be copying an aspect of Ingmar Bergman’s childhood; Allen’s genius lies in adding that when Zelig’s parents are really mad, they “get into the closet with him.”

Zelig’s targets go beyond the filmmaker’s family, and include the press (“in those days, you’d do anything to sell papers. To get a story, you’d jazz it up, exaggerate, even maybe play with the truth a little bit. But here was a story. It was a natural. You just told the truth and it sold papers. It never happened before”), politicians (“He was selling the same piece of property to a lot of the same people, and… Matter of fact, a congressman from Delaware bought it twice”), psychologists (“I worked with Freud in Vienna. Yes, we broke over the concept of penis envy. Freud felt that it should be limited to women”), and philosophers (“His performance endears him as well to many leading French intellectuals, who see in him a symbol for everything” ).

Set in the 1920s and 1930s, the film revolves around Leonard Zelig (Allen), an indistinct man who has the ability to alter his appearance and behavior to fit those of the people around him; e.g., “When two Frenchmen enter, Zelig assumes their characteristics and speaks reasonable French. In the company of a Chinese person, he begins to develop oriental traits;” etc etc.

This desire and ability to blend in ironically makes him an outcast; “Zelig’s very existence is a non-existence. Devoid of personality, his human qualities long since lost in the confusion of life, he sits alone, silently staring into space, a figure, a non-person… The one who only wanted to fit in, to belong, to go unnoticed by his enemies and being loved, neither fits nor belongs, is supervised by enemies, and remains abandoned”. His protean nature also gives him access to a number of famous people and historical events. In this sense, Zelig is ahead of Forrest Gump, not only in that it precedes it, but also in that it surpasses it.

Zelig is disruptive in more ways than one; while Forrest finally fades into the background as a new, Zelig anarchically places his protagonist, much to his own dismay, front and center of the action; in the Vatican he creates commotion by interrupting a ritual that had not been celebrated in “63 years” (while “His Holiness Pope Pius XI tries to swat the intruder with a sacred decree”), and in Germany the greatest irony of all: his “desired immersion in the mass and anonymity” lead the Jew Zelig to join the Sturmabteilung — the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party — ruining Hitler’s speech at a Nazi rally (“We couldn’t believe our eyes. Hitler’s speech was ruined. He wanted to make a good joke about Poland, but just then, Zelig interfered and Hitler was extremely upset”).

A charming mockumentary about a fictional 1920s personality filmed as if cobbled together from old black-and-white footage.

Woody strikes again!
Woody can be clever. Woody can be funny. And when Woody’s clever AND funny, you get “Zelig”.

Telling the story of Leonard Zelig (Woody Allen, who else?) who transforms himself chameleon-like into anyone just to get people to like him, he finds himself the object of on-going observation from a kind doctor (Farrow), who eventually falls for him.

But lest you think this is simply a love story, there are also pot-shots at fame, fads, the 1930s (!!), medical conventions, product cash-ins and the joys and pitfalls of celebrity.

Then there’s the sheer joy of the technical wizardry that allows Woody’s Zelig to stand alongside such figures as Josephine Baker, Brickhouse, William Randolph Hearst, Marion Davies, “Red” Grange, Al Capone, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Lou Gehrig and Fanny Brice. This is the same type of FX visible in “Forrest Gump”, and eleven years before the fact! Nice going.

But you haven’t lived till you’ve seen Woody trying to blend in at an Adolph Hitler speech.

There’s a lot of slapstick but there’s also a lot of great lines (“I have to council a group of chronic masturbators”, Zelig complains, “and if I’m late they’ll start without me.”) Classic.

But at the center of it all is Woody himself, just like his Zelig character, wanting only to be liked, if not loved. He succeeds. Once you see “Zelig”, you’ll love it.

Eight stars, plus one star more for watching Woody be serenaded by Fanny Brice. He’s the cat’s pajamas!

Woody Allen’s “Epic” film of a man finding his place in society
Woody Allen’s Zelig is a funny, but that’s to be expected. Right from the start one gets that this is a “mockumentary” done mostly with archival footage and interviews, so it would be hard for Allen (working in this form the first time) to keep a straight face as a filmmaker. He has to make jokes, as a character and as a writer, and it would be hard not to when having a ‘chameleon’ like the one Leonard Zelig is in the film, going from scene to scene, place to place, historical event to celebrity to circus act to scandal-celeb and, finally, anti-Nazi hero.

But there’s more to the piece than I remembered first seeing the film when I was younger. It’s a very smart and precise account of what a person in society becomes when he tries, and succeeds, to become like those around him. What happens when conforming- or just getting people to ‘like’ you or respond well to you- goes too far in a direction? We see how Zelig, who first got this gift/curse to be a human chameleon after being beat up as a child (there’s a funny story to that, by the way, if you can believe it), does this trick with some people not quite noticing at first, then it spreads like wildfire that this guy can go along with any group he’s in. He can be a fat guy, a black musician, a politician, a man with a mustache, anything. We’re not shown him being a woman at any point, but that option could be open as well.

Zelig is also an epic, in a sense, and as perceptive- maybe a lot more focused in its approach- as Forrest Gump. Where that posited a man drifted through the highs and lows of the 50’s through the 60’s, with Zelig we’re treated to what a man goes through in the world of the press and high fashion and glitz and glamour and living high in the 1920’s and 1930’s. Allen loves this time period, and the footage he puts together (what he filmed exactly and what wasn’t is hard to spot, making it all the more masterful and exquisite, aside from the laugh factor) is infectious in its spirit. And it looks and feels so much like a documentary that it immerses the viewer into its subject matter without a moment’s thought of thinking “oh, that looks fake”. Often, I was laughing at the specific photos, the way people are put together, and Allen’s wit as Zelig that I wouldn’t bother to notice its “fake” elements.

But beneath its satire on society and what it means to fit in, or not, and the trappings of fame and the fun with psychology (“Freud and I disagreed on Penis Envy,” says Zelig as a “Psychologist”, “he said it only worked for women”), is a heart. We do feel for Zelig, as well as his state of being and finding of himself with the doctor played by Mia Farrow. So, when these crazy things do happen to him, or around him, or little visual puns are made (San Simeon clips are some of the best), he isn’t just some running one-note gag. Allen makes him a character, and even delivers one of his finest performances. He’d have to – he’s everyone and no one at once. A+

Other Information:

Original Language en
Runtime 1 hr 19 min (79 min)
Budget 0
Revenue 11798616
Status Released
Rated PG
Genre Comedy
Director Woody Allen
Writer Woody Allen
Actors Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Patrick Horgan
Country United States
Awards Nominated for 2 Oscars. 7 wins & 19 nominations total
Production Company N/A
Website N/A

Technical Information:

Sound Mix Mono
Aspect Ratio 1.85 : 1
Camera Panaflex Camera and Lenses by Panavision
Laboratory John E. Allen Associates, USA (opticals), DuArt Film Laboratories Inc., New York, USA
Film Length 1,992 m (Italy)
Negative Format 35 mm
Cinematographic Process Spherical
Printed Film Format 35 mm