Saul Bellow

In one of his finest achievements, Nobel Prize winner Saul Bellow presents a multifaceted portrait of a modern-day hero. A suffering and persecuted intellectual, Moses E. Herzog passively accepts the disasters of his private and public affairs in an effort to survive modern civilization.

An eccentric American millionaire, age 55, sets out to prove that there is more to life than waiting for death.

For over forty years Saul Bellow has been writing fiction that denounces the destructive forces that have dominated the literature of this century - existential nihilism and historicist pessimism. In novel after novel - The Adventures of Augie March, Herzog, Humboldt's Gift, Mr. Sammler's Planet, and others - he has tried to restore the integrity of the private life, the value of human feeling, and the primacy of social contract and proclaimed each...

Through the eyes of an elderly Polish Jew, a comment on 20-century existence. A former journalist and survivor of a Nazi concentration camp, he lives in New York's upper west side, musing on the loss of tradition, roots, and ideals, and eyeing various family crises with curious but objective eyes.

This spoof of documentary films stars Woody Allen as Leonard Zelig, the famous "Chameleon Man" of the 1920's, whose personality was so vague he would assume the characteristics of whomever he came into contact with. Filmed in black-and-white, the movie simulates the look of a newsreel, complete with stentorian narration.