Midnight in Paris: A Woody Allen Film

Midnight in Paris is a magical movie by Woody Allen. The star of the film is Paris—past and present. It is the first of Allen's 42 pictures shot entirely on location in the City of Light.

Owen Wilson is charming and wonderful as the lead actor. His character is a screenwriter visiting Paris with his fiancé, played by the gorgeous Rachel McAdams, and her parents. The marvelous French actress Marion Cotillard and the First Lady of France, Carla Bruni, also play important parts.

Midnight in Paris is nominated for 4 Academy Awards—Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Art Direction. The movie has garnered Woody Allen more praise than any of his pictures since 1994. 93 percent of film critics gave it a positive review, and an average of four out of five stars. The picture has grossed over $150 million at a cost of $17 million.

Woody Allen was born Allan Konigsberg in 1935. He was born and reared in Brooklyn, the son of a jewelry engraver father and bookkeeper mother. Woody first became known as a witty writer for television programs. He became famous as a stand-up comedian who was a nervous, neurotic intellectual.

Woody Allen is a successful author and playwright, in addition to writing, directing, and acting in movies. He is also an accomplished musician. I had the pleasure seeing him play clarinet at the Carlyle Hotel in Manhattan. His band specializes in New Orleans Jazz tunes from about 100 years ago.

Woody Allen has been nominated for 23 Academy Awards, including one as an actor; seven as director; and fifteen as screenwriter—more than any other writer. He has won three Oscars, but does not attend the ceremonies. His wins were for Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters.

Midnight in Paris is one of Woody Allen's best pictures. My favorite films of his include: Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989); Husbands and Wives (1992); Bullets over Broadway (1994); Mighty Aphrodite (1995); The Curse of the Jade Scorpion (2001); Hollywood Ending (2002); Match Point (2005); and Scoop (2006).

All Woody Allen movies feature terrific casts, unparalleled dialogue, and fabulous music.

SPOILER ALERT! From the trailer the chief device of the film is not revealed. If you want to be as surprised as I was, skip this next section.

Midnight in Paris is a warm movie with a graceful pace and beautiful cinematography. The picture opens with a three minute montage of Paris that leaves no doubt this is a special place.

Midnight is Paris is billed as a romantic comedy but the starring couple appear to have nothing in common. It is actually a fantasy film about Time Travel and Golden Age Thinking.

Golden Age Thinking is defined as "the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one one's living in. It is a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present. Nostalgia is denial; denial of the painful present."

Owen Wilson's character sees Paris in the Jazz Age (1920s) as the Golden Age. He dreams about living there and then, when Paris was the center of the artistic universe. In the film, his dreams come true as he travels in time and gets to meet all of his heroes from those days.

And that to me is the most awesome part of the film. A great cast magnificently portrays Ernest Hemingway; F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda; Pablo Picasso; Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody); Henri Matisse; Cole Porter; T.S. Eliot; Man Ray; Josephine Baker; and Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), among others. While watching this part of the movie, I had a longing to go there too.

It is funny that when our hero confesses to the three Surrealists that he is from the future, he is met with shrugs. Things get more complicated when our protagonist falls in love with a woman from the 1920s. She longs to have lived in the Paris of the 1890s, what is fondly and rightly remembered as the Belle Epoque (Beautiful Era). They magically go there together and meet Degas, Gauguin, and Toulouse-Lautrec at the Moulin Rouge (Red Mill) and Maxims Paris. They learn that these three painters wish they lived during the Renaissance, which they consider the Golden Age.

When asked in an interview about how he characterized all of these famous figures from the past, Woody Allen said: "I was thinking with great horror the other day that, since I'm a known person, 100 years from now someone will make a movie about New York in my time, and I would be, let's say, not an important character in it but a peripheral character. Someone will go into Elaine's, and there I'll be, played by some schlemiel, because I'm conceived of as a schlemiel, and he'll have glasses on, and he'll be a gloom-ridden recluse who shivers at the thought of going out into the country."

"I don't mind death; I just don't want to be there when it happens."

“I'd never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member.”

“I love nature, I just don't want to get any of it on me.”

"I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland."

“You can live to be a hundred if you give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred.”

“I took a test in Existentialism. I left all the answers blank and got 100.”

“This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, Doc, my brother’s crazy. He thinks he’s a chicken. The doctor says, Well, why don’t you turn him in? And the guy says, I would but I need the eggs."

“Photons have mass? I didn’t even know they were Catholic.”

“The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won’t get much sleep.”

“I'd call him a sadistic, hippophilic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse.”

“Maugham then offers the greatest advice anyone could give to a young author: "At the end of an interrogation sentence, place a question mark. You'd be surprised how effective it can be.”

“In my next life I want to live my life backwards. You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in an old people's home feeling better every day. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day. You work for 40 years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school. You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, you become a baby until you are born. And then you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then Voila! You finish off as an orgasm!”

To me, the Golden Age was the 1950s in America. I believe some eras are definitely better than others, nostalgia or no nostalgia. This doesn't mean I haven't lived well and enjoyed the Sixties, Seventies, Eighties, Nineties, and the Aughts. Today our culture has sunk into a cesspool of decadence. The manner of dress, the filthy language, the lack of manners, the saturation of sex and violence, the sacrilege, the ignorance, the decline of happiness, and the loss of a clear understanding of what is right and what is wrong, has America on the road to perdition.

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The Most Funny Movie Ever Made

Forrest Gump