Zelig
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Zelig |
| Original title | Zelig |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1983 |
| length | 71 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Woody Allen |
| script | Woody Allen |
| production | Charles H. Joffe , Robert Greenhut |
| music | Dick Hyman |
| camera | Gordon Willis |
| cut | Susan E. Morse |
| occupation | |
| |
Zelig is the second pseudo-documentary (English also mockumentary ) by the American director Woody Allen after Woody, the unlucky fellow . It is the eleventh directorial work of the New York director and, due to its technical effort and its seemingly historical reference, represents a further milestone in Woody Allen's artistic work. Numerous newsreel recordings from archive material were elaborately edited to include the figure of Leonard Zelig as a well-known personality of the 1920s to appear.
action
The film is set in New York at the end of the twenties. Leonard Zelig has a special quality: Due to his insecurity towards other people, he adapts mentally and physically to the respective environment. In the vicinity of gangsters he is z. B. a gangster yourself. It is because of this quality that he becomes world-famous as a human chameleon. Alongside other scientists, the psychiatrist Dr. Eudora Fletcher of the case. She falls in love with him and heals him briefly through intensive therapy. The situation becomes problematic again when Zelig's past comes more and more into the public eye. There are former lovers and wives, people who recognize him as their dentist, and many others who are now demanding recourse. He fled to Germany, where he became a National Socialist due to external circumstances. Eudora looks for him and finds him right behind Hitler at the Nazi party rally. She escapes with him back to the United States, where both are celebrated as national heroes.
Reviews
- Der Spiegel , 40/1983: Woody Allen and his Zelig have crept so skillfully into contemporary history that he can no longer be separated from her. Perhaps, according to Zelig, the history of the Third Reich really has to be rewritten. Because the fact that Hitler was a frustrated joke-teller who cracked other jokes about Poland than his bloody jokes is, God gave him Zelig, new too. The reason is that Allen does not clumsily falsify history, but regards it as a footnote to Zelig's biography.
- Lexicon of international film : In style and gesture a perfect pretense of a popular documentary about a person from contemporary history. A masterful satire on pathos, mendacity, authenticity and the greed for sensation of a media-determined public, but also a cinematic essay on identity and adaptation in the modern world.
Anecdotes
- Well-known intellectuals such as Susan Sontag , Saul Bellow or Bruno Bettelheim comment on the film plot in order to make the film appear like a real documentary.
- The film uses both black and white and color sequences, with contemporary shots always being in color. Among other things, camera lenses from the 1920s were used to create a smooth transition between the newsreel material used and the new material.
- Mae Questel sings the song "Chameleon Days" composed for the film. She is also known from the film New York Stories , in which she plays the mother of Woody Allen's character.
- Zelig received two Academy Award nominations for Best Cinematography and Best Costume Design, but won none of the awards.
- In the German dubbed version, the voiceover of the narrator Ulrich Wickert - at that time America correspondent, who later became “Mr. Topics of the day ”.
DVD release
- Zelig . MGM Home Entertainment 2005
literature
- Woody Allen : Zelig. Screenplay (Original title: Zelig ). German by Armgard Stewart Seegers . With photos by Kerry Hayes and Brian Hamill. Diogenes, Zürich 1991, 131 pages, ISBN 3-257-21154-6 (first edition 1984)
- Robert Sickels: “It Ain't the Movies! It's Real Life! " Cinematic Alchemy in Woody Allen's “Woody Allen” D (M) oc (k) umentary oeuvre. In: Gary D. Rhodes (ed.) (2006): Docufictions. Essays on the intersection of documentary and fictional filmmaking. Pp. 179-190, Jefferson, NC: McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-2184-8
Web links
- Zelig in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Hellmuth Karasek : Human chameleon . In: Der Spiegel . No. 40/1983 , October 3, 1983, pp. 280–283 ( online in the Spiegel archive [accessed November 1, 2017]).
- ↑ Zelig. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed November 1, 2017 .