Midnight in Paris

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
Cinematography Darius Khondji
Johanne Debas
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
Country United States
Spain
Language English
Budget $17 million[1]
Box office $124,485,000

Midnight in Paris is a 2011 romantic comedy-fantasy film written and directed by Woody Allen.[2] The plot centers on a small group of Americans visiting the French capital for business and pleasure. The protagonist, a screenwriter, 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.[3] The movie explores themes of nostalgia, modernism and existentialism.

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.[3][4] The film opened to widespread critical acclaim and has commonly been cited as Woody Allen's best film since 1994's Bullets Over Broadway. It has become a global box office success.

Contents

Plot

Gil (Owen Wilson), a successful but distracted Hollywood screenwriter, and his fiancée, Inez (Rachel McAdams), are in Paris, vacationing with Inez's wealthy, conservative parents (Mimi Kennedy, Kurt Fuller). Gil is struggling to finish his first novel, which is about a man who works in a nostalgia shop, but Inez and her parents are critical and dismissive of Gil's desire to give up his lucrative Hollywood career to write it. While Gil is considering moving to the city, Inez is intent on living in Malibu. By chance, they are joined by Inez's friend Paul (Michael Sheen), a pseudo-intellectual who speaks with great authority but little actual accuracy on the history and art of the city. Inez idolizes him, but Gil, who is an ardent admirer of the Lost Generation, finds him insufferable.

Paul and his wife Carol (Nina Arianda) invite Inez and Gil to go dancing. Inez accepts but Gil declines and chooses to return to the hotel through the streets of Paris, eventually becoming lost. As he stops, bells chime midnight and 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 admires and idolizes in the novel he is writing. He encounters Cole Porter (Yves Heck), Josephine Baker (Sonia Rolland), and Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Alison Pill and Tom Hiddleston), who take him to meet Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll). Hemingway agrees to show Gil's novel to Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), 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 bored, 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 Gertrude Stein, who agrees to read his novel and introduces him to Pablo Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo) and Picasso's mistress Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a beautiful student of couture to whom Gil is instantly attracted. The next day, back in 2010, Gil encounters Picasso's painting of Adriana at a museum, and recites much information about its creation, which annoys Paul (because it contradicts much of what he had been saying) and Inez becomes embarrassed, because she cannot appreciate what he is saying and believes Paul.

Over the next few days, Gil spends each night in the past. His late-night wanderings frustrate Inez, who cannot understand his interest in Paris or his desire to write a novel, and arouse the suspicion of her father, who hires a detective (Gad Elmaleh) to follow Gil. This proves unsuccessful, as the detective attempts to follow the car and winds up lost in Versailles during the era of Louis XIV.

Gil spends increasing amounts of 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 and confused. He confides his predicament to Salvador Dalí (Adrien Brody), Man Ray (Tom Cordier) and Luis Buñuel (Adrien de Van), but being surrealists they consider his position to be totally normal and see nothing strange about his coming from the future.

While Inez shops for furniture in the Marché aux puces (flea market) on the outskirts of Paris, Gil meets Gabrielle (Léa Seydoux), an antiques dealer who shares his fondness for the twenties and the music of Cole Porter. 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 dreamt 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, a horse and carriage appears. They are invited inside by a richly-dressed couple and are transported back to the Belle Époque, an era Adriana considers Paris's Golden Age. They are taken to the famous Maxim's Paris restaurant, and meet Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (Vincent Menjou Cortes), Paul Gauguin (Olivier Rabourdin) and Edgar Degas (François Rostain). 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, but Gil realizes that despite the allure of nostalgia, it is better to accept the present for what it is. Adriana elects to stay in the past, and they sadly part ways.

Gil retrieves his novel from Gertrude 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 the present and confronts Inez. She admits to sleeping with Paul but claims that it can be forgotten when they return to California. Gil breaks up with Inez and decides to remain in Paris. Taking a walk at midnight, he unexpectedly meets Gabrielle, and offers to walk her home.

Cast

The cast includes (in credits order):[5]

Production

Writing and Casting

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’. [6]

He (Owen Wilson) doesn’t sound like he's acting, he sounds like a human being speaking in a situation, and that's very appealing to me. He’s got a wonderful funny bone, a wonderful comic instinct that’s quite unlike my own, but wonderful of its kind. He’s a blonde Texan kind of Everyman’s hero, the kind of hero of the regiment in the old war pictures, with a great flair for being amusing. It’s a rare combination and I thought he’d be great.[7]

—Woody Allen, Sony Pictures Classics

Allen originally wrote the character, Gill, as an east coast intellectual, but he rethought it when he and casting director Juliet Taylor began considering Owen Wilson for the role. “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 Gill 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”.[8] This is the second time Rachel McAdams and Owen Wilson costarred 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.[9] Allen had high praises for her performance and that of co-star Marion Cotillard.[10] Cotillard was cast as Wilson’s other love interest, the charismatic Adrianna.

Carla Bruni was recruited by Allen for a role as a museum guide.[11] There were false reports that Allen re-filmed Bruni's scenes with Léa Seydoux,[2] but Seydoux rebuffed these rumours revealing she had an entirely separate role in the film.[12] 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."[13]

Filming

Principal Photography began July 2010, in Paris.[14] Allen states that the fundamental aesthetic for the camera work gave the film a warm ambience. 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.[16]

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.”[17]

Locations

The film opens with an extensive, 3 ½ 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] were partially filmed there.

Filming locations include John XXIII Square (near Notre Dame), Montmartre, The Palace of Versailles, Opera, Sacré-Cœur, on the Île de la Cité itself, and near the Panthéon.[11]

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 third film the two companies have co-produced, the others being Vicky Cristina Barcelona and You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger.

The Sony Classics team decided to take a lemon and make lemonade. They obtained a list of reporters who were invited to the "Cars 2" junket and sent them press notes from "Midnight in Paris," encouraging them to ask Wilson questions about the Allen film during the Pixar media day. Wilson happily complied, answering queries about his character in "Paris" that provided material for a host of stories. Sony Classics also got a hold of Wilson's schedule of TV appearances to promote "Cars 2" on shows like "Late Show With David Letterman," then bought ad time for "Paris" spots on the nights when Wilson was a guest.[22]

—Patrick Goldstein, Los Angeles Times

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. Owen Wilson was already committed to promoting Pixar animation's blockbuster, 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 ads, 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 debut 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] Opening in limited release at six theaters on May 20, Midnight in Paris grossed $599,003 in its first weekend.[1] It expanded to 944 theaters on June 10.

Midnight in Paris is Allen's highest grossing film before adjusting for inflation in North America. As of September 10th, 2011, the film has grossed $53,115,883 domestically, overtaking his previous best, Hannah and Her Sisters, which grossed $40 million.[25]

Critical reception

Midnight in Paris has received critical acclaim. Rotten Tomatoes reports that 92% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 149 reviews, with an average score of 7.9/10. Among Top Critics it received 95% positive reviews with an average rating of 8.2. The critical consensus is: "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."[26] The film has received Allen's best reviews and score on the site since 1994's Bullets Over Broadway.[27] The website Metacritic, which assigns normalized scores to film reviews, gave the film 81 out of 100, based on 40 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[28]

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".[29]

Many critics including A. O. Scott of The New York Times have commented Owen Wilson's success at channeling the Woody Allen persona in this film. 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's a memorable film stating 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."[30]

Roger Ebert gave the film 3½ stars out of four. He ended his review with this quote:[31]

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."

Ebert's quote is inncorrect, however, in stating that Paris is Allen's 41st film; it is actually his 42nd (when including the television film Don't Drink the Water).

American film critic Richard Roeper gave it an A; referring to it as a wonderful film and calls it one of the best romantic comedies in recent years, Stating that it's a love letter to Paris and the romance it inspires. He commented that the actors are uniformly brilliant and praised the film's use of witty one liners.[32]

On 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."[33]

Midnight in Paris is commonly compared to one of Woody Allen's earlier works, The Purple Rose of Cairo, particularly due to its fantasy elements and lack of explanation for the means by which Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) travels back in time. David Edelstein, New York magazine, have 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."[34]

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."[35]

However, 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."[36] 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."[37]

References

  1. ^ a b "Midnight in Paris (2011)". Box Office Mojo. http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=midnightinparis.htm. Retrieved 18 October 2011. 
  2. ^ a b "Humiliation for Carla Bruni as she faces being cut from Woody Allen's new film". Daily Mail. September 9, 2010. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1310214/Humiliation-Carla-Bruni-faces-cut-Woody-Allens-new-film.html. Retrieved September 9, 2010. 
  3. ^ a b "Kathy Bates, Michael Sheen join 'Paris'". The Hollywood Reporter. April 22, 2010. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3i3c46fd70101741ed4f838ff19b54129a. Retrieved 2010-07-29. [dead link]
  4. ^ "Adrien Brody Enjoys Midnight in Paris". EmpireOnline.com (May 17, 2010). Retrieved March 18, 2011.
  5. ^ Leffler, Rebecca (July 13, 2010). "French comedians added to Woody Allen cast". The Hollywood Reporter. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/french-comedians-added-woody-allen-25436. Retrieved March 18, 2011. 
  6. ^ [ http://www.buzzinefilm.com/interviews/film-interview-woody-allen-midnight-paris-05242011].Retrieved 2011-10-29.
  7. ^ Allen, W. (22 November 2010). [1]. Sony Pictures Classics. Retrieved 29 October 2011.
  8. ^ [www.sonyclassics.com/midnightinparis/production.html].Retrieved 2011-10-29.
  9. ^ [ www.sonyclassics.com/midnightinparis/midnightinparis_presskit.pdf].Retrieved 2011-10-29.
  10. ^ [2].Retrieved 2011-10-29.
  11. ^ a b "Carla Bruni-Sarkozy makes acting debut with Woody Allen". Associated Press. France 24. July 29, 2010. http://www.france24.com/en/20100729-carla-bruni-sarkozy-makes-acting-debut-with-woody-allen-midnight-in-paris-hollywood-owen-wilson-film-movies. Retrieved July 29, 2010. 
  12. ^ "Carla Bruni not fired from Woody Allen film". The Hollywood Reporter (September 9, 2010). Retrieved June 11, 2011.
  13. ^ "Woody Allen defends Carla Bruni". Telegraph.co.uk (August 22, 2010). Retrieved June 11, 2011.
  14. ^ [3]. Retrieved 2011-10-29.
  15. ^ [4]. Retrieved 2011-10-29.
  16. ^ "Trivia for Midnight in Paris". IMDb. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1605783/trivia. Retrieved 5 June 2011. 
  17. ^ [5]. Retrieved 2011-10-29.
  18. ^ [6]Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2011-10-29.
  19. ^ "Filming locations for 'Love and Death' (1975)". IMDb. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073312/locations. Retrieved 2010-07-29. 
  20. ^ "Filming locations for 'Everyone Says I Love You' (1996)". IMDb. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116242/locations. Retrieved 2010-07-29. 
  21. ^ Vivarelli, Nick (August 7, 2010). "Euro artfilm producers hunker down". Variety. http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118022682.html?categoryid=13&cs=1. Retrieved June 11, 2011. 
  22. ^ Goldstein, P. (22 November 2010). [7]. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 29 October 2011.
  23. ^ [ http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/movies/2015585312_moviemarketing13.html].Retrieved 2011-10-29.
  24. ^ Leffler, Rebecca (2011-02-02). "Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris to Open Cannes Film Festival". The Hollywood Reporter. http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/woody-allens-midnight-paris-open-95633. Retrieved 2011-02-02. 
  25. ^ McClintock, Pamela (2011-07-16). "Midnight in Paris Becomes Woody Allen's Top Film of All Time in North America". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2011-07-18.
  26. ^ "Midnight in Paris Movie Reviews". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2011-08-08.
  27. ^ "Woody Allen". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2011-06-11.
  28. ^ "Critic Reviews for Midnight in Paris at Metacritic". Metacritic.com. http://www.metacritic.com/movie/midnight-in-paris/critic-reviews. Retrieved 2011-06-14. 
  29. ^ McCarthy, Todd (2011-05-11). "Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris: Cannes Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved 2011-06-11.
  30. ^ Scott, A. O. "The Old Ennui and the Lost Generation", The New York Times. Retrieved 2011-10-02.
  31. ^ "Midnight in Paris :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews". Rogerebert.suntimes.com. http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110524/REVIEWS/110529987. Retrieved 2011-06-20. 
  32. ^ http://www.richardroeper.com/reviews/midnightinparis.aspx
  33. ^ Kirkpatrick, Rob. "Woody Rediscovers Woody in Paris." [8]The Huffington Post. Retrieved 2011-07-23.
  34. ^ Edelstein, D. "It's a Good Woody Allen Movie", New York Magazine. Retrieved 2011-10-02.
  35. ^ Morgenstern, J. "We'll Always Have Allen's 'Paris'", The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2011-10-02.
  36. ^ http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/may/11/cannes-film-festival-woody-allen-review
  37. ^ http://specials.blogs.time.com/2011/05/11/midnight-in-paris-woody-allens-off-key-love-song/

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