VHS of the Month: "Zelig"

[VHS of the Month covers movies only - or best - commercially available on VHS.]

Woody Allen has always treated his work strangely by Hollywood standards: he usually refuses to talk about old films, and though his movies are often cited for their brilliant use of music, he generally hasn't sanctioned the release of soundtracks. Unsurprisingly, probably on his insistence, his classic movies have been sparsely issued on DVD. Most were simultaneously released in 3 volumes of box sets called "The Woody Allen Collection," each movie including a short booklet, a theatrical trailer, and French and Spanish subtitles. The transfer and packaging on the discs was uniformly fine, and it's probably a testament to the lavish treatment movies are accustomed to that his DVDs seem like a raw deal. That said, Annie Hall probably holds the unfortunate distinction of having the least supplemented DVD of any film to ever win Best Picture. (It's a shame, because even among Best Pictures it's a film of unusual quality.) Yet the Woody Allen movie that could most benefit from a lavish modern release has to be Zelig, an undeservedly overlooked masterwork in Allen's filmography.

The film, released in 1983, is a mockumentary centered around the phenomenon of Leonard Zelig, a man whose chameleon-like ability to physically and socially transform himself to blend in with any crowd in which he finds himself makes him an unlikely celebrity of the Roaring Twenties. In addition to being an extremely touching and funny movie, Zelig was a visual miracle, seamlessly integrating Zelig into archival photographic and video footage a decade before computer imagery made such a feat commonplace. Exploration of the technical achievements of a film like this is the very sort of thing special edition DVDs were designed for. Whether or not such a release will ever take place is hard to say. Until then, used VHS editions are not only absurdly cheap, but in many ways, even a more appropriate way to enjoy one of the last and greatest accomplishments to have been literally created on film.