Blu-ray Release: Zelig

Blu-ray Release Date: July 12, 2016
Price: Blu-ray $29.95
Studio: Twilight Time


The 1983 docu-comedy Zelig is writer-director-star Woody Allen’s (Love and Death) utterly idiosyncratic take on a very serious subject – personal identity – hilariously told via the mutable character of “the chameleon man” of the 1920s and ‘30s, Leonard Zelig (Allen).

zelig1In technically exquisite documentary style, we are given this tragically amusing fellow, who can’t help taking on the characteristics of those around him, and who thus becomes a strange sort of celebrity, himself.

The film co-stars Mia Farrow (The Purple Rose of Cairo) and features deadpan interviews with the likes of Susan Sontag, Saul Bellow, and Bruno Bettelheim – plus extraordinary archival footage offering glimpses of everyone from F. Scott Fitzgerald to Adolf Hitler.

Twilight Time’s Blu-ray edition of the film contains an isolated score track and an original theatrical trailer.

As supplier Twilight Time prints up only 3,000 copies of each title, be sure to keep an eye on the Twilight Time site or that of their distributor Screen Archives’s for the announcement of the prebook date (usually 2-3 weeks before the title’s street date) and get ready to reserve!

About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.