Meditations on Celebrity

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

ZELIG Directed and Written by Woody Allen

"Cole Porter was fascinated by him," recalls a witness. "He wrote a song: You 're the Top, You 're Leonard Zelig. But he couldn't find anything to rhyme with Zelig."

Cole Porter was not alone. In his time, the '20s and '30s, the whole world was bewitched by the strange case of a human chameleon so eager to be liked that he developed the capacity literally to change accent, shape and even color in order to ingratiate himself with whomever he happened to be with. One day Scott Fitzgeraid noticed him at a Gatsby-like Long Island party; the next, he was sitting in with a black jazz band at a Chicago speakeasy. Soon enough, Presidents and prizefighters, pundits and publishers were seeking him out. And where they led, the newspapers, the admen, Hollywood and all the other hustlers followed.

To tell the story of a first-generation American, who like many of his ilk would undergo any contortion in order to join the national mainstream, Woody Allen (who plays Zelig) has chosen a form that is utterly original in conception and exhilarating in execution. It is a parody of a television documentary, one of those compilations of old newsreels, scratchy recordings and animated stills held together by a voice-over narration. This material is supported by modern interviews, shot in jarring color, in which aged witnesses (among them Mia Farrow, who plays his psychiatric savior) testify about Zelig's life. They are abetted by modern "experts," among them Saul Bellow, Susan Sontag, Irving Howe and Bruno Bettelheim, in effect playing themselves playing themselves. Like Allen, they have perfect pitch. But Allen skewers not only the modern TV form but the loopy manner of the show's antique sources. Dick Hyman contributes songs like You May Be Six People, but I Love You that catch the flavor of hasty topicality, and Cinematographer Gordon Willis recaptures the conventions of oldtime photography. The match between his footage and genuine historical shots is perfect.

Zelig is the culmination of a long quest by Allen. He is virtually the only celebrity who has continually investigated the values and liabilities of his own status. Three years ago, in Stardust Memories, he attempted to order these thoughts on film and was roundly criticized for so doing. In that story of a comedian oppressed by his own fame, he was unable to achieve the distance and objectivity he needed. Zelig's form provides both. Acutely satirizing mediaspeak, the film hilariously exposes the vulgarizations and misleading distortions of that language. At the same time, it touchingly demonstrates that celebrity is a kind of victimization, capable of claiming the souls of those who have some skill or talent, no matter how strange or silly, that is marketable.

Like all of Allen's best work, Zelig is, finally, a comedy of manners--public manners in this case, not private ones as in Annie Hall or Manhattan. In Yiddish it means blessed, and Zelig is, surely, in the midst of a typical American summer at the movies when almost everything is a loud assault on the senses, a benison. It is both a welcome wooing of sensibility and intellect and a film that will be recalled long after Labor Day has come and gone. --By Richard Schickel This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.