Woody Allen introduces his film Midnight in Paris with a montage-style sequence of Parisian images
depicting life as the city turns from day to night, followed by Gil and Inez at
a Monet-inspired pond walk; Gil seems disillusioned and deeply affected by
Paris’ magnetic power from the start. Allen
sets the stage for typical American cinematic fare, or so it seems. Because of
this, we have to wonder—more accurately speculate—whether Allen simply accepted
the cinematic norms he fought for so many years or if he concocted an elaborate
hoax to make us think he did.
I highlight one “moment,” while subtle, that points to Allen
acting more as magician than filmmaker.
Gil is walking with his fiancée, Inez, and her mother. The mother remarks about seeing an American
film while they are in Paris. She seems
indifferent to the film, and Gil remarks that the average film she saw sounds
like something he could have written. We
could take this as criticism of the American tourist, who simply reenacts his
typical life rather than immersing himself into the foreign culture. I believe, though, that Allen subversively
attacks the notion that he succumbed to creating passive film experiences. While the simplicity of the overall plot points
to a lack of refined filmmaking, the hints he buries in the dialogue crack at
an industry, and more specifically, a genre of film that often repeats itself.
That genre of film, the romantic comedy, which sits at the
top of the film’s Wikipedia page interestingly enough, generally involves boy
meets girl, boy loves girl, boy loses girl but eventually gets her back. On the surface, we see that boy, Gil, and the
girl he appears to desire, Marion Cotillard’s character Adriana. Unbeknownst to the typical rom-com audience, this
relationship has no significance in Allen’s eyes, harkening back to the opening
montage. The true romance on display is
between Gil and the city of Paris; any feelings he portrays to the female
characters merely distracts from his genuine love in the film. Allen creates this film with an entirely
separate, submerged story, and in doing so, creates a film that both embraces
and attacks the straight-lined American romantic comedy. He forces the audience to answer one simple
question: What film did you see?
I agree with much of your post but there is one specific point that I would like to refute. You claim that the complicated relationships between Gil and Adriana (as well as between Gil and Inez) are of no importance to Woody Allen. I disagree. Gil's relationships are very important in driving the film and in helping to convey its overall meaning. Inez represents everything that Gil perceives to be wrong with the era in which he lives. She is obsessed with material items, rude, closed minded, and judgmental. Interestingly, Adriana, who represents many of the things that Gil glorifies about the 1920’s, shares many of Inez's qualities, due to her dating history, we can see that she is drawn to money, she leads many men on, and is also closed minded (especially about the perception of the era that she lives in). This shows early on in the film that many parallels will be drawn between different character’s actions and mindsets in both the present and past.Yet, Adriana also represents many of the things that Gil loves about Paris; she is artsy, free, beautiful, and spontaneous. When Gil travel back to the Belle Époque era , a time that Adriana considers to be a golden age, and speaks to the likes of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Paul Gauguin, and Edgar Degas, all intellectuals who consider The Renaissance to be the golden age, he reevaluates his life and his glorification of the past. It is only through Gil's complicated relationship with Adriana that he finally realizes how much he takes for granted in his life and in the time that he lives. So, while Paris is Gil's true love in an ideological sense, it is through his relationships with Adriana and Inez that he is drawn both to the city itself and to his discovery of some of the most important ideas that the film explores.
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