Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Woody Allen
Produced by	Letty Aronson Stephen Tenenbaum Jaume Roures
Written by	Woody Allen
Starring	Owen Wilson Rachel McAdams Marion Cotillard Kathy Bates Adrien Brody Carla Bruni Michael Sheen
Music by	Stephane Wrembel
Cinematography	Darius Khondji
Editing by	Alisa Lepselter
Studio	Gravier Productions Mediapro Televisió de Catalunya (TV3) Versátil Cinema
Distributed by	Sony Pictures Classics
Release date(s)	May 20, 2011 (2011-05-20) (Limited) June 10, 2011 (2011-06-10) (Wide)
Running time	94 minutes [1]
Country	United States ‹See Tfd› Spain
Language	English French
Budget	$17 million[2]
Box office	$148,289,110 [2]

Midnight in Paris is a 2011 romantic comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen.^[3] The plot centers on a small group of Americans visiting the French capital for business and pleasure. The film follows Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), a screenwriter, who is forced to confront the shortcomings of his relationship with his fiancée and their divergent goals due to his magical experiences in the city beginning each night at midnight.^[4] The movie explores themes of nostalgia and modernism.

Produced by Spanish group Mediapro and Allen's Gravier Productions, the film stars Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Kathy Bates, Carla Bruni, Adrien Brody and Michael Sheen. It premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and was released in North America in May 2011.^[4][5] The film opened to widespread critical acclaim and has commonly been cited as one of Allen's best films in recent years. In 2012, the film won both the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay and the Golden Globe Awards for Best Screenplay; and was nominated for three other Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Art Direction.^[6]

Plot

Gil Pender, a successful but creatively unfulfilled Hollywood screenwriter, and his fiancée, Inez, are in Paris, vacationing with Inez's wealthy, conservative parents. Gil is struggling to finish his first novel, set at an antique shop, but Inez dismisses his ambition as a romantic daydream. While Gil is considering moving to the city of Paris (which he notes, much to the dismay of his fiancée, is most beautiful in the rain), Inez is intent on living in Malibu. By chance, they are joined by Inez's friend Paul, a pseudo-intellectual who speaks with great authority but questionable accuracy on the history and art of the city. Inez adores him, but Gil finds him insufferable.

One night, Gil gets drunk and wanders the streets of Paris. At midnight, an antique car pulls up, and the passengers—dressed in 1920s clothing—urge Gil to join them. They go to a bar, where Gil comes to realize that he has been transported to the 1920s, an era he idolizes. He encounters Alice B. Toklas, Cole Porter, Josephine Baker, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, who take him to meet Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway agrees to show Gil's novel to Gertrude Stein, and Gil goes to fetch his manuscript from his hotel. However, as soon as he leaves the bar, he finds he has returned to 2010.

Gil attempts to bring Inez to the past with him the following night, but while they wait, she gets frustrated, and peevishly returns to the hotel. Just after she leaves, the clock strikes midnight and the car pulls up again, this time with Hemingway inside it. He takes Gil to meet Stein, who agrees to read his novel and introduces him to Pablo Picasso and his mistress Adriana, to whom Gil is instantly attracted. Stein reads aloud the novel's first line:^[7]

"'Out Of The Past' was the name of the store, and its products consisted of memories: what was prosaic and even vulgar to one generation have been transmuted by the mere passing of years to a status at once magical and also camp."

Over the next few days, Gil spends each night in the past. His late-night wanderings frustrate Inez, and arouse the suspicion of her father, who hires a detective to follow Gil. Meanwhile, Gil spends more and more time with Adriana, who leaves Picasso and has a brief dalliance with Hemingway. Gil realizes that he is falling in love with her, leaving him conflicted. He confides his predicament to Salvador Dalí, Man Ray, and Luis Buñuel, but being surrealists they see nothing strange about his coming from the future, finding it to be perfectly normal. They discuss the impossibility of Gil's relationship with Adriana, each one of the artists seeing a different masterpiece inspired by the unusual romance.

While Inez shops for furniture, Gil meets Gabrielle, an antiques dealer and fellow admirer of the Lost Generation. Gil later discovers Adriana's diary from the 1920s in a book stall on the Seine and finds out that she was in love with him. Reading that she dreamed of receiving a gift of earrings from him and then making love to him, Gil attempts to steal a pair of earrings from Inez to give to Adriana, but is thwarted by Inez's early return from a trip.

Gil purchases earrings for Adriana and, returning to the past, confesses his love for her. As they kiss, they are invited inside a carriage by a richly-dressed couple and are transported back to the 1890s Belle Époque, an era Adriana considers Paris's Golden Age. They are taken to Maxim's Paris, and eventually to the Moulin Rouge where they meet Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, and Edgar Degas. When Gil asks what they thought the best era was, the three determine that the greatest era was the Renaissance. The enthralled Adriana is offered a job designing ballet costumes, and proposes to Gil that they stay. Gil, however, realizes that despite the allure of nostalgia, it is better to accept the present for what it is. Adriana elects to stay in the 1890s, and they sadly part ways.

Gil retrieves his novel from Stein, who praises his progress as a writer but questions why the main character has not realized that his fiancée (based on Inez) is having an affair with a pedantic character based on Paul. Gil returns to 2010 and confronts Inez. She admits to sleeping with Paul, but dismisses it as a meaningless fling. Inez's parents agree with Gil when he tells her that they are not right for each other, prompting Inez's father to confess that he had Gil followed, though the detective simply disappeared - actually ending up in the 17th century. Gil breaks up with Inez and decides to remain in Paris. Taking a walk at midnight, he meets Gabrielle and, after it starts to rain, he offers to walk her home and learns that she likes Paris in the rain too.

Cast

The cast includes (in credits order):^[8]

This is the second time McAdams and Wilson co-starred as a couple; they did so before in 2005's Wedding Crashers. In comparing the two roles, McAdams describes the one in Midnight in Paris as being far more antagonistic than the role in Wedding Crashers.^[10] Allen had high praises for her performance and that of co-star Marion Cotillard.^[11] Cotillard was cast as Wilson's other love interest, the charismatic Adriana.

Carla Bruni, singer-songwriter and wife of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, was recruited by Allen for a role as a museum guide.^[12] There were false reports that Allen re-filmed Bruni's scenes with Léa Seydoux,^[3] but Seydoux rebuffed these rumours revealing she had an entirely separate role in the film.^[13] Allen also shot down reports that a scene with Bruni required over 30 takes: "I am appalled. I read these things and I could not believe my eyes...These are not exaggerations, but inventions from scratch. There is absolutely no truth." He continued to describe Bruni as "very professional" and insisted he was pleased with her scenes, stating that "every frame will appear in the film."^[14]

Production

Writing

Allen employed a reverse approach in writing the screenplay for this film, by building the film’s plot around a conceived movie title, ‘Midnight in Paris’. ^[15] Allen originally wrote the character Gil as an east coast intellectual, but he rethought it when he and casting director Juliet Taylor began considering Owen Wilson for the role.^[9] “I thought Owen would be charming and funny but my fear was that he was not so eastern at all in his persona,” says Allen. Allen realized that making Gil a Californian would actually make the character richer, so he rewrote the part and submitted it to Wilson, who readily agreed to do it. Allen describes him as "a natural actor".^[9]

Filming

Principal photography began in Paris in July 2010.^[16] Allen states that the fundamental aesthetic for the camera work gave the film a warm ambiance. He describes that he likes it (the cinematography), “intensely red, intensely warm, because if you go to a restaurant and you’re there with your wife or your girlfriend, and it’s got red-flecked wallpaper and turn-of-the-century lights, you both look beautiful. Whereas if you’re in a seafood restaurant and the lights are up, everybody looks terrible. So it looks nice. It’s very flattering and very lovely.”^[15] To achieve this he and his cinematographer, Darius Khondji, used primarily warm colors in the film’s photography, filmed in flatter weather and employed limited camera movements, in attempts to draw little attention to itself. This is the first Woody Allen film to go through a digital intermediate, instead of being color timed in the traditional photochemical way. According to Allen, its use here is a test to see if he likes it enough to use on his future films.^{[17][unreliable source]}

Allen's directorial style placed more emphasis on the romantic and realistic elements of the film, than the fantasy elements. He states that he "was interested only in this romantic tale, and anything that contributed to it that was fairy tale was right for me. I didn’t want to get into it. I only wanted to get into what bore down on his (Owen Wilson’s) relationship with Marion."^[15]

Locations

The film opens with a 3½-minute postcard-view montage of Paris, showing the usual and iconic tourist sites. Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times describes the montage as a stylistic approach that lasts longer than necessary to simply establish location. According to Turan, “Allen is saying: Pay attention — this is a special place, a place where magic can happen.”^[18] Midnight in Paris is the first Woody Allen film shot entirely on location in Paris, though both Love and Death (1975)^[19] and Everyone Says I Love You (1996)^{[20][unreliable source]} were partially filmed there.

Filming locations include Giverny, John XXIII Square (near Notre Dame), Montmartre, the Palace of Versailles, the Opéra, the Sacré-Cœur, the Île de la Cité itself, and streets near the Panthéon.^[12]

Marketing

The film is co-produced by Allen's Gravier Productions and the Catalan company Mediapro^[21] and was picked up by Sony Pictures Classics for distribution. It is the fourth film the two companies have co-produced, the others being Sweet and Lowdown, Whatever Works and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.

In promoting the film, Allen was willing to do only a limited amount of publicity at the film's Cannes Film Festival, during its debut in May. Wilson was already committed to promoting Pixar's Cars 2, which opened in late June, several weeks after Allen's film arrived in theaters.

Due to these mishaps and the small budget for promotion, Sony Classics Co-Presidents Tom Bernard and Michael Barker used guerrilla marketing campaign to promote the film. His company has spent $10 million marketing the film, which is a fraction of what a studio shells out for a summer tentpole film. Bernard describes that when buying advertisements, he and his team went through the TV Guide, not the ratings book, because they were trying to find their niche audience and not just the broad public, through the shows with the biggest ratings.^[23]

The film's poster is a reference to Vincent van Gogh's 1889 painting The Starry Night.

Release

Owen Wilson and Woody Allen promoting the film at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

Box office

The film made its début at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival on May 11, where it opened the festival as a first-ever screening for both professionals and the public.^[24] It was released nationwide in France that evening, Wednesday being the traditional day of change in French cinemas.^[25] It went on limited release in six theaters in the United States on May 20, Midnight in Paris where the box office take was USD$599,003 in the first weekend.^[2] It spread to 944 theaters on June 10.

Midnight in Paris achieved the highest gross of any of Allen's films, before adjusting for inflation, in North America. As of December 18, 2011, the film has earned $56,293,474 in North America, overtaking his previous best, Hannah and Her Sisters, at $40 million.^[26]

Critical reception

Midnight in Paris received an enthusiastic critical response; Rotten Tomatoes reports that 93% of critics surveyed have given the film a positive review; based on a sample of 149 American reviews, with an average score of 7.9/10. It summarises the consensus, "It may not boast the depth of his classic films, but the sweetly sentimental Midnight in Paris is funny and charming enough to satisfy Woody Allen fans."^[27] The film has received Allen's best reviews and score on the site since 1994's Bullets Over Broadway.^[28] The website Metacritic, which assigns normalized scores to film reviews, gave the film 81 out of 100, based on 40 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".^[29]

The film received some generally positive reviews after its premiere at the 64th Cannes Film Festival. Todd McCarthy from The Hollywood Reporter praised Darius Khondji's cinematography and claimed the film "has the concision and snappy pace of Allen's best work".^[30]

A. O. Scott of The New York Times commented on Owen Wilson's success at playing the Woody Allen persona. He states that the film is marvelously romantic and credibly blends "whimsy and wisdom". He praised Khondji's cinematography, the supporting cast and remarked that it is a memorable film and that "Mr. Allen has often said that he does not want or expect his own work to survive, but as modest and lighthearted as Midnight in Paris is, it suggests otherwise: Not an ambition toward immortality so much as a willingness to leave something behind – a bit of memorabilia, or art, if you like that word better – that catches the attention and solicits the admiration of lonely wanderers in some future time."^[31]

Roger Ebert gave the film 3½ stars out of four. He ended his review thus:^[32]

This is Woody Allen's 41st film. He writes his films himself, and directs them with wit and grace. I consider him a treasure of the cinema. Some people take him for granted, although Midnight in Paris reportedly charmed even the jaded veterans of the Cannes press screenings. There is nothing to dislike about it. Either you connect with it or not. I'm wearying of movies that are for "everybody" – which means, nobody in particular. Midnight in Paris is for me, in particular, and that's just fine with moi."

As a side note to Ebert's quote, Paris is Allen's 42nd film when including the television film Don't Drink the Water (1994).^{[citation needed]}

Richard Roeper, an American film critic, gave Midnight in Paris an "A"; referring to it as a "wonderful film" and "one of the best romantic comedies in recent years". He commented that the actors are uniformly brilliant and praised the film's use of witty one-liners.^[33]

In The Huffington Post, Rob Kirkpatrick said the film represented a return to form for the director ("it's as if Woody has rediscovered Woody") and called Midnight in Paris "a surprising film that casts a spell over us and reminds us of the magical properties of cinema, and especially of Woody Allen's cinema."^[34]

Midnight in Paris has been compared to Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), in that the functioning of the magical realism therein is never explained. David Edelstein, New York magazine, commended that approach, stating that it eliminates, "the sci-fi wheels and pulleys that tend to suck up so much screen time in time-travel movies." He goes on to applaud the film stating that, "this supernatural comedy isn't just Allen's best film in more than a decade; it's the only one that manages to rise above its tidy parable structure and be easy, graceful, and glancingly funny, as if buoyed by its befuddled hero's enchantment."^[35]

Peter Johnson of PopCitizen felt that the film's nature as a "period piece" was far superior to its comedic components, which he referred to as lacking. "While the period settings of Midnight in Paris are almost worth seeing the film... it hardly qualifies as a moral compass to those lost in a nostalgic revelry," he asserts.^[36]

Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal acknowledged the cast and the look of the film and, despite some familiarities with the film's conflict, praised Allen's work on the film. He wrote, "For the filmmaker who brought these intertwined universes into being, the film represents new energy in a remarkable career.".^[37]

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian, giving the film 3 out of 5 stars, described it as "an amiable amuse-bouche" and "sporadically entertaining, light, shallow, self-plagiarising." He goes on to add that it's "a romantic fantasy adventure to be compared with the vastly superior ideas of his comparative youth, such as the 1985 movie The Purple Rose of Cairo."^[38] More scathing is Richard Corliss of Time, who describes the film as "pure Woody Allen. Which is not to say great or even good Woody, but a distillation of the filmmaker's passions and crotchets, and of his tendency to pass draconian judgment on characters the audience is not supposed to like... his Midnight strikes not sublime chimes but the clangor of snap judgments and frayed fantasy."^[39]

Quentin Tarantino named Midnight in Paris as his favorite film of 2011.^{[citation needed]}

The film was well received in France, allocine, a website, gave it 4.2/5 stars based on a sample of twenty reviews.^[25] Ten of the reviews gave it a full five stars, including Le Figaro, which praised the film's evocation of its themes and said "one leaves the screeening with a smile on one's lips".^[40]

Accolades

Home media

The soundtrack was released on December 9, 2011 and the DVD on December 20, 2011.^[47]

References

External links

• Official website (US)
• Official website (France)
• Johnathan Jones: "Midnight in Paris: a beginner's guide to modernism." The Guardian, October 11, 2011
• Midnight in Paris at the Internet Movie Database
• Midnight in Paris at AllRovi