The ‘unreel’ in Woody Allen’s Zelig

L Nas

doi:10.4102/lit.v13i3.775

Abstract

By presenting Zelig (1983) in the form of a historical documentary using archival film footage, film - director Woody Allen breaks down the conventional distinction between documentary and fiction film. Through metacinematic self-consciousness Zelig hybridly 'chameleonizes’ recorded historical 'truth' exposing this truth to be ‘unreal’: it explodes the notion of the cinematic ‘real’, turning it into the ‘unreel’.

Highlights

In a review of Woody Allen’s Zelig in The New Yorker of 8 August 1983 film critic Pauline Kael (1983:84) dismisses Zelig as "a lovely small comedy, which probably can’t bear the weight of praise being shovelled on it"
While we h ear a fem ale voice-over speak, the cam era cuts to the presen t day, in colour. This voice we know is Susan Sontag’s, as her name pops onto the screen
Stam and Shohat (1987:192, n. 7) report that some spectators, after having seen Zelig, came out of the cinema making remarks to the effect that "If that guy Zelig was so important, how come I have never heard of him?" O ne of the comm ents addressed to me after reading this paper at a conference dealt with a sim ilar question as the addresser was concerned w hether Susan Sontag, Irving Howe and Saul Bellow had been aware of what they were lending their images and voices to

Summary

Introduction

In a review of Woody Allen’s Zelig in The New Yorker of 8 August 1983 film critic Pauline Kael (1983:84) dismisses Zelig as "a lovely small comedy, which probably can’t bear the weight of praise being shovelled on it". Zelig to her seem s small, because "there are n ’t many characters in it, not even Zelig. While we h ear a fem ale voice-over speak, the cam era cuts to the presen t day, in colour. This voice we know is Susan Sontag’s, as her name pops onto the screen. W hen you think that at th at tim e he was as well known as Lindbergh it was really quite astonishing" (Allen, 1987:3-4) onto the visual proof of a massive parade in New York, the viewer presum es this parade to be in honour of Z elig; and by linking Z elig to C harles L indbergh the illusion o f a historical context is created, so that both figures become part of the same ‘reality’

Narrative and memory

Construction of subjectivity

Deconstructive film

Poststructuralist mimesis

Conclusion