ZELIG (Jul 1983)
Director, Writer: Woody Allen.
Starring: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Patrick Horgan, w, Patrick Horgan, Ellen Garrison, Jack Cannon, Theodore R. Smits, Sherman Loud, Elizabeth Rothschild, Kuno Sponholz, Sol Lomita, Mary Louise Wilson, Marianne Tatum, Charles Denny, Michael Kell, Garrett M. Brown, Sharon Ferrol-Young, Richard Litt, Dimitri Vassilopoulos, John Rothman, Stephanie Farrow.

Woody Allen is title character, ZELIG, a "chameleon man" who transforms into the type of person he is near - whether that person be Native American, African-American, Hassidic Jew, German, etc.

Woody Allen writes and directs this absurdist mockumentary.

PAtrick Horgan as the narratorwho sounds exactly like one of those old-timenarrators, inflection and pronunciation, etc.
absurdist mockumentary
they make a 1935 movie about him - with all th emain characters sexy analogs for the real people - hilarious.

such care and thoguht put into the segments - the montageof merchandise, the grainy fil footage of simple people , the newspaper clippings, the

BECOMES THE TOAST OF manhattan, and thenhollywood.

songswrittenabout him, merch.
falls for his psychoanalyst, Mia Farow - they are married -
even joins hitler youth rally and becomes Nazi - long before Forrest Gump - just before Spinal tap - like THE RUTLES - with talking head testimonials - with that 70s kind of sheen to the filmstock - but then he artfully splices himself into old phtoso from the 20's, newsreels footage, with stressed, cracked filmstock - incredible technincal prowess - set in 1920s everyhting is seamless - all the radio broadcasts, the look and style of the narrator even is from the 1930s radio broadcast - what an incredible filmmaker


meets William Randolph Hearst - meets Presidents
was this the first mockumentary? Was it before RUTLES.
brilliance of ZELIG is in HOW he chooses to tell the story - set in the 1920s, 30s with all the media reflecting that style of communication, from the newsreeel footage - to the grainy photos and the narrator's radio voice.