Zelig (1983)
Directed by Woody Allen
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.
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What critics compared Zelig to
…has been played up in the television ads, which seem to be selling the movie as a combination of "Rain Man" and the Woody Allen comedy "Zelig," which also used archival newsreel footage and computer handiwork to give the impression that the lead actor was actually standing next to a famous person.
That's the cinematic formula for "Forrest Gump," which combines the most interesting elements of "The World According to Garp," Woody Allen's "Zelig" and "Being There."
Dustin Hoffman was an autistic savant in “Rain Man.” Woody Allen shared the limelight with famous faces in “Zelig.”
Related to the newsreels in Woody Allen's "Zelig," only much more elaborate and impressive, the effects--created by Industrial Light & Magic--are showstoppers, presenting Forrest convincingly interacting with several Presidents, including John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.
Mixing elements of "Rain Man," "The World According to Garp" and Woody Allen's "Zelig," "Forrest Gump" covers 30 years in Gump's life, and reframes recent history by suggesting that one man can leave his stamp -- through blunders, serendipity and simple good will -- on several key historical moments.
Like Woody Allen's character in "Zelig," Forrest shows up in newsreel and TV footage thanks to technological sorcery, so well and hilariously employed by Zemeckis here.
Furthermore, the film does some creative things with the form, including inserting the characters in world history in a way that recalls the Woody Allen film Zelig, or perhaps the “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man” episode of The X-Files.
The jumble of influences includes Woody Allen’s maddening Zelig, in that you may find yourself, as I did, wishing for the movie to settle down and actually start.
Although he has crossed the Atlantic yet again for his latest, “Midnight in Paris” deliberately channels the same deep-rooted fascination with the storied 1920s as did “Zelig,” “Bullets Over Broadway” and “Sweet and Lowdown.”
The man has the ability to channel surrealism and fantasy with films like “Zelig” and “Sleeper,” and thankfully “Midnight in Paris” is a return to form.
When it does, Woody digs into his personal yesteryear to replay the magic-realism card he pulled out in Zelig and The Purple Rose of Cairo.
And the peek behind the curtain of time and reality is familiar from "The Purple Rose of Cairo" and "Zelig."
Wilson’s face is both goofy and heartbreaking in its openness, and it speaks of something we don’t often see in Allen’s movies: Genuine yearning, and not just the desire to be someone else (an idea Allen explored cogently in Zelig), but to be somewhere else, decades away from the here and now.
At the same time, this is “Zelig’’ without a spine, a work that wallows in the nostalgia it professes to puncture.
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Allen, remember, used this in "Zelig" and "Take the Money and Run."
Still, he was never quite as appealing back then as when he worked in purely Woody Allen territory -- it's hard to imagine movies like Zelig, Hannah and her Sisters, and Radio Days springing from anyone else's brain.