Chameleon Street

Chameleon Street is a very amusing look at an intriguing character, who seems to find peace in recreating himself through various occupational, and identity transformations. He brilliantly masquerades as a number of professionals, and takes his audience through a thrill ride of elaborate schemes to make money, while carefully concealing his true identity. Ultimately, he is unable to escape his own character flaws, which cause his elaborate plot to unravel, thread by thread, before his very eyes. Although other stories have chronicled the lives of impostors, none have been told in such a refreshingly comical manner. It is a treat to watch.

Unfortunately, you will probably have a difficult time obtaining a viewing of this. The video store in my area known for having everything charges a couple hundred deposit for it.

Anyway, its a hilarious dark comedy with very sophisticated humor. By that I mean, if you were to not pay attention closely the humor would fly by and you wouldn't even notice. I wouldn't consider myself intellectually challenged, but I had to watch the beginning of this film three times before I understood what happened. The hero - Douglas Street - goes from a crap job to 15 minutes of fame by concocting a scheme involving a political figure. Ok, the scheme is so utterly stupid (funny as hell), yet this is where the picture evolves into the masterpiece it is.

I watched this initially on the Sundance Channel. I was shocked by how this could be an unknown sleeper still. Its weird and right up there with the likes of Clockwork Orange. If you couldn't laugh at that, doubtful you will laugh at this.

JM

Wendell B. Harris -- he also wrote and directed this movie -- is bored with his life with his well-paying job with his father's company and his beautiful wife. So he reinvents himself as an exchange student at Yale, then as various other people. It's all remarkably easy for him.

He's playing William Douglas Street Jr., a real man who did exactly that. It's a remarkable performance, although after a while it becomes apparent that it is a performance; after all, Harris is acting here, and his ability to work in different registers is an actor's meat and potatoes.

Nonetheless, the movie itself is an interesting character study, as the character reveals himself as a very intelligent manic-depressive who grows bored with his successes. That's good scripting combined with good acting. I'm not too sure that the ending, which is probably lose to what happened, is good story-telling; the police come to arrest him and the story ends, like a Tex Avery cartoon.

In real life, Street kept the impersonations going for perhaps 46 years, false identities he assumed included those of a reporter for TIME magazine, a Houston Oilers wide receiver, an all-star football player from the University of Michigan, a physician at Henry Ford Hospital (in 1973), attorneys (1979 and 1980) and as a first-year medical student at Yale University. Staff at the Detroit Human Rights Department where he posed as an attorney volunteer found him skillful enough that "if he ever straightens out, we wouldn't mind having him back." What the movie doesn't mention is that he was caught kiting checks and extortion. He was sentenced in his mid-60s to three years on identity theft.

Inspired by the real life exploits of an African American man who impersonated everything from a lawyer to a surgeon to a foreign exchange student in the 1970s, 'Chameleon Street' might sound a lot like 'Catch Me If You Can', but this is a distinctly different sort of film. In the hands of writer-director Wendell B. Harris Jr., the protagonist is a curiously pitied character: one who cannot help but "intuit" the needs and desires of everyone he meets and "become that need" - far closer to the title character in 'Zelig' than Frank Abagnale Jr. There is a lot to like in how his dilemma feels like a hyperbolic metaphor for the way we all function, acting differently in different situations depending on who else we are with. The film's dramatic crunch comes from how his chameleonic nature impacts on his ability to be the father and husband that his family wants, though this area feels a tad undernourished due to a very false performance by the actress playing his daughter as well as the script's constant inflection towards comedy. And yet, while the laughs tend to overshadow the drama, the funny moments work incredibly well. Highlights include the protagonist lecturing a drunk on how to conjugate the F-word, a fake epileptic seizure that gets out of control and him rambling off a whole string of "J'accuse" sentences while trying to speak French.

I saw this movie after it was recommended by The Criterion Channel. The premise of "Chameleon Street" is simple: a guy needs money, so he impersonates people in order to get money.

Titular William Douglas Street's morality is vintage confidence man, as is his technique. The film's narrative is uncomplicated, a by the numbers imposter flick in the tradition of "The Great Imposter (1961) or "Catch Me If You Can" (2002) with a hint of "Hollywood Shuffle" (1987).

"Chameleon Street" appears to have had a low but decent budget, unlike some other Sundance successes. At times the camera and lighting techniques reminded me of Robert Florey's "The Life and Death of 9413: a Hollywood Extra" (1928).

If the movie has a problem, it resides with Street himself. An imposter only after money, a point Harris emphasizes in addressing the camera, falls a little flat, at least in relation to, say, the Will Smith character of Paul, in "Six Degrees of Separation" (1993). Street displays only the mundane pathology of straitened circumstances with a little greed thrown in. There is hardly any dark side to his character, unlike Ferdinand Waldo Demara's great imposter or DiCaprio's Frank Abagnale.

Actor Wendell Harris gives an adequate, if less than brilliant, rendition of his subject. I would have appreciated a little less of his overbroad, wink-wink approach to some of Street's "roles". But writer Harris is good, very good. The dialog is often witty, eloquent, even garnished with butchered French in one of Street's "roles". According to this website, this movie is Harris' only writing credit, a shame. This guy can write.

If you want to hear well crafted dialog composed with wit, verve, and all those other things that have been missing from your screens, this is the movie for you.