Midnight in Paris

These are my notes for this week's screening:

Midnight in Paris

USA 2011                    100 minutes

Director:                      Woody Allen

Starring:                        Adrien Brody, Carla Bruni, Kathy Bates, Marion Cotillard, Michael Sheen, Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Tom Hiddleston

Nominations and Awards

• Nominated for four Oscars including Best Film, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.
• Another 39 nominations, including a BAFTA nomination for Best Original Screenplay and 11 wins, including a Golden Globe for Best Original Screenplay.

“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.”

Roger Ebert

Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) is a disillusioned Hollywood scriptwriter who while visiting Paris with his fiancée (Rachel McAdams) and future parents-in-law finds that the city has revived his desire to become a serious novelist.  While walking through the city late one night Gil is picked up by a mysterious antique Peugeot that takes him back in time to the 1920s where he meets Gertrude Stein, F Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Cole Porter. In subsequent trips to the past he also travels back to the 1892, where he meets Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin and Degas.  Gil rejects an offer from a girl he meets to stay in the past but his trips back in time help him resolve what to do with his life in the present.   

There are many modern films with a time travel theme with the Back to the Future trilogy and Groundhog Day being the most successful.  In Allen’s own, extensive catalogue, there are certain similarities to The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) in which an actor steps out of a film and falls in love with a girl in the audience.  However Philip French also suggests that Allen has been influenced by Victor Sjoestroem’s silent film The Phantom Carriage (1921), the favourite film of his idol Ingmar Bergman, in which a ghostly coach travels round town at midnight picking up the dead. 

Since 2000 Woody Allen has worked extensively in Europe with European casts where his films have included Match Point (2005) and You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger (2010), both of which were filmed in the UK and the award-winning Vicky Christina Barcelona (2008) which was filmed in Spain.

Here's the trailer:

Vicky Christina Barcelona

We are screening Vicky Christina Barcelona on Thursday 8th October. Here are the film notes:

Vicky Christina Barcelona

US/Spain 2008 (96 minutes)
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Javier Bardem, Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson and Penelope Cruz

Awards and Nominations
Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Penelope Cruz)
Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy
A further 18 wins and 27 nominations

While visiting Barcelona Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Christina (Scarlett Johansson) meet Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a famous artist, and begin a relationship with him, not knowing that his ex-wife (Penelope Cruz), with whom he had a tempestuous relationship, is about to come back into his life.

Allen sets the film up as a worldly-wise study of what remains after passion has dissipated, the type of film that Eric Rohmer has produced so well; but as Phillip French has noted its premise of American girls being bowled over by European culture the film also echoes the core plot of Three Coins in the Fountain (1954). The cast is truly international with British actor Rebecca Hall affecting a perfect American accent and two Spanish actors who are equally at home in Hollywood as well as in Spanish cinema. However it is the Spanish actors who won praise for their performances, with Javier Bardem receiving several nominations as Best Supporting Actor and Penelope Cruz winning several awards, including an Oscar, as Best Supporting Actress.

After nearly two decades of producing a string of classic films like Annie Hall (1977), Manhattan (1979), Hannah And Her Sisters (1986) and Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989) in and around in New York Woody Allen moved to Europe, where his films had always been more successful, and began a new phase in his career. In London he produced Match Point (2005) which was well received and whose cast included Scarlett Johansson and followed this with Scoop (2006), which received mixed reviews and which as yet to be released in the UK, and Cassandra’s Dream (2007). From the UK he moved to Spain and Vicky Christina Barcelona marked a return to the form that produced Match Point, although it is unlikely that he will ever return to the form that produced a series of classics in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Woody Allen’s next film is Whatever Works (2009), set in France and he is currently working on what IMDB calls his Untitled Woody Allen London Project, which is scheduled for release in 2010.