Saul Bellow Movies
The PBS series Great Performances first presented the made-for-TV feature Seize the Day. The time is the success-driven '50s; Robin Williams plays Tommy Wilhelm, a middle-ager who has just lost his salesman's job. Margaret, his wife (Katherine Borowitz), is on the verge of divorce and fully intends to take him to the cleaners whether he has an income or not. Doctor Adler (Joseph Wiseman), Tommy's judgmental father, cannot abide having a failure in the family and refuses to lend his son a single penny. In desperation, Tommy heads to New York City, where his old wheeler-dealer pal Dr. Tamkin (Jerry Stiller) has promised him a job. Even there, however, Tommy is defeated by the cold-shoulder treatment afforded him by the people whose opinions he values most. Seize the Day was adapted by Ronald Ribman from the novel by Saul Bellow. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Robin Williams, Jerry Stiller, (more)
Leonard Zelig, the "human chameleon", is profiled in this mock-documentary. Director Woody Allen appears as Zelig in scenes that purport to be vintage newsreel clips of the 1920s and 1930s, but are actually clever recreations, "aged" and scratched-up Citizen Kane-style by special-effects maestros Joel Hynick, Stuart Robinson and R. Greenberg Associates. An appropriately pompous narrator details the life and times of Leonard Zelig, whose overwhelming desire for conformity is manifested in his ability to take on the facial and vocal characteristics of whomever he happens to be around at the moment. He shows up at batting practice with Babe Ruth, among William Randolph Hearst's guests as San Simeon, side by side with Pope Pius at the Vatican, and peering anxiously over the shoulder of Adolf Hitler at the Nuremberg Rally. Becoming a celebrity in his own right, Zelig inspires a song, a dance craze, and a Warner Bros. biopic. Mia Farrow plays Dr. Eudora Fletcher , a psychiatrist who tries to "reach" Zelig and ultimately falls in love with him (all of Farrow's scenes are in black-and-white and allegedly culled from archive footage; Ellen Garrison, whose resemblance to Farrow is uncanny, plays the older Dr. Fletcher in the interview sequences). In the manner of Reds, the influence of the fictional Leonard Zelig on popular culture is discussed by such real-life notables as Susan Sontag, Irving Howe, Saul Bellow and Dr. Bruno Bettenheim. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, (more)
