If I could go back in time to any era in history, it would probably be the 1960s. I’d love to see what Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Bayard Rustin, Ella Baker and other civil rights leaders were like in person. I wasn’t a very big Beatles fan growing up, but it would probably be cool to sit in a bar and talk politics with John Lennon. And of all the actresses I’d hit on, Natalie Wood and Ann Margaret would be at the top of my list. For Woody Allen, that era is 1920s Paris.
Paris is the perfect setting for just about anything – romance, politics, art... It’s one of the richest cities in the world in terms of culture. But mostly, it’s just really nice to look at.
Allen sets up Midnight in Paris, his 41st movie, with beautiful, still shots of present-day Paris. The City of Lights has always been about its cafés, its architecture, its cobblestone streets... the images are almost too perfect, and Allen captures it brilliantly in the first five minutes.
From there we meet Gil (Owen Wilson), a hack screenwriter working on his first novel. He's on holiday with his stuck up fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her equally stuck-up parents. He hopes to find inspiration in the city that produced great work by the likes of Picasso, Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald. They meet up with old friends of hers, including her old professor, Paul, a pseudo-intellectual who argues with a French tour guide over the name of Rodin’s wife. Annoyed by Paul’s smarmy know-it-allness, Gil wanders off by himself to experience Paris at night. At around midnight, he’s picked up in a Peugeot by some friendly strangers and dropped off in a bar where he meets... F. Scott Fitzgerald! Zelda Fitzgerald!! Ernest Hemingway!!! Has he lost his mind or has he actually travelled through time?
It doesn’t matter. He goes back every midnight to the same spot and is transported to the same time and place. Pretty soon, Gil is meeting every artistic and literary figure in 1920s Paris – Cole Porter, T.S. Eliot, Salvador Dali.... He gets tips on his novel from Gertrude Stein and machismo lessons from Hemingway.
Gil’s late-night escapades tick off Inez, whose father hires a private detective to follow him. I’m not ruining anything by saying the detective disappears, but what happens to him I’ll leave for you to find out. It’s the most amusing scene in the film.
Gil also finds a soul-mate in one of Picasso's models/mistresses, Adriana (Marion Cotillard – who after seeing in three movies I’m now convinced is the most beautiful woman working in film right now). She too romanticizes past eras in French history, but finds nothing special about the 1920s or the people she’s surrounded by. Picasso’s a womanizer, Zelda Fitzgerald is crazy, and Hemingway wants to fight people. For her, 1890s Paris – la Belle Epoque – was the most beautiful period in France. You can probably guess what happens next. It starts to dawn on Gil that maybe the present isn’t so bad. After all, they don’t even have penicillin in the 1920s.
Midnight in Paris doesn’t depart greatly from Allen’s recent work, and the characters are all familiar archetypes from most of his movies – phony intellectual, mismatched couple, beautiful muse, nerdy writer – but it’s more charming and sentimental than most of his films that I’ve seen. I particularly loved how there’s no elaborate special effects used to transport Gil back to the 1920s. Allen trusts that his audience is intelligent enough not to need such bells and whistles.
I also loved the Paris setting. Most European cities are beautiful, but there’s something about the French capital that’s magical. When it starts raining, Gil asks Inez to walk back to the hotel with him because Paris is more beautiful in the rain. I can’t think of another city that’s true of.
