The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 15, Luis Bunuel)

Midnight In Paris Scene – “I See a rhinoceros”

surrealism definition. A movement in art and literature that flourished in the early twentieth century.Surrealism aimed at expressing imaginative dreams and visions free from conscious rational control. Salvador Dali was an influential surrealist painter; Jean Cocteau was a master of surrealist film.

Wikipedia says concerning Bunuel:

After this apprenticeship, Buñuel shot and directed a 16-minute short, Un Chien Andalou, with Salvador Dalí. The film, financed by Buñuel’s mother,[42] consists of a series of startling images of a Freudian nature,[43] starting with a woman’s eyeball being sliced open with a razor blade. Un Chien Andalou was enthusiastically received by the burgeoning French surrealist movement of the time[44] and continues to be shown regularly in film societies to this day.[45]

The script was written in six days at Dalí’s home in Cadaqués. In a letter to a friend written in February 1929, Buñuel described the writing process: “We had to look for the plot line. Dalí said to me, ‘I dreamed last night of ants swarming around in my hands’, and I said, ‘Good Lord, and I dreamed that I had sliced somebody or other’s eye. There’s the film, let’s go and make it.'”[46]

….When his first film (Un Chien Andalou) was released, Buñuel became the first filmmaker to be officially welcomed into the ranks of the Surrealists by the movement’s leader André Breton, an event recalled by film historian Georges Sadoul: “Breton had convoked the creators to our usual venue [the Café Radio]… one summer’s evening. Dalí had the large eyes, grace, and timidity of a gazelle. To us, Buñuel, big and athletic, his black eyes protruding a little, seemed exactly like he always is in Un Chien Andalou, meticulously honing the razor that will slice the open eye in two.”

The SURREALISTS were the same men who started the “Dada Movement” and Francis Schaeffer noted concerning that movement: 

Dada was started in Zurich and came along in modern art. Dada means nothing. The word “Dada” means rocking horse, but it was chosen by chance. The whole concept of Dada is everything means nothing. [In this materialistic mindset Chance and Time have determined the past, and they will determine the future according to Solomon in life UNDER THE SUN (Ecclesiastes 9:11 says this)]…  Dada carried to its logical conclusion the notion of all having come about by chance; the result was the final absurdity of everything, including humanity.

(Surrealists: Man Ray, Jean Arp, Yves Tanguy, André Breton; Tristan Tzara, Salvador Dalí, Paul Eluard, Max Ernst and Rene Clevel, 1930.)

Francis Schaeffer in his book THE GOD WHO IS THERE noted:

“It is often said that Søren Kierkegaard, the Dane (1813-55)… is the father of modern secular thinking and of the new theological thinking…. Why is it that Kierkegaard can so aptly be thought of as the father of both? What proposition did he add to Hegel’s thought that made the difference? Kierkegaard came to the conclusion that you could not arrive at synthesis by reason. Instead, you achieved everything of real importance by a leap of faith. So he separated absolutely the rational and logical from faith…...from that time on, if rationalistic man wants to deal with the real things of human life (such as purpose, significance, the validity of love) he must discard rational thought about them and MAKE A GIGANTIC, NON-RATIONAL LEAP OF FAITH. The rationalistic framework had FAILED TO PRODUCE AN ANSWER ON THE BASIS OF REASON, and so all hope of a uniform field of knowledge had to be abandoned.”

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(Francis Schaeffer pictured below)

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(Luis Bunuel, Man Ray, Salvador Dali visit with Gil Pender in the movie MIDNIGHT IN PARIS)

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(Luis Buñuel & Salvador Dali, circa 1930 pictured below)

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(Pictured above Adrien de Van in MIDNIGHT IN PARIS and filmmaker Luis Buñuel and below Tom Cordier as Man Ray)

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The principle of making A GIGANTIC, NON-RATIONAL LEAP OF FAITH is demonstrated by the Surrealists in a  scene in MIDNIGHT IN PARIS  when Salvador Dali introduces his friends Luis Bunuel and Man Ray to Gil Pender and then comments to them “Pender is in a perplexing situation.”

Gil Pender tells the SURREALISTS, “It sounds so crazy to say. You guys are going to think I’m drunk, but I have to tell someone. I’m…from a…a different time. Another era.The future. OK? I come…from the 2000th millennium to here.I get in a car, and I slide through time.”

When they accept this then Gil responds, “Yeah, you’re surrealists!But I’m a normal guy.” In other words the SURREALISTS understand Gil’s predicament and realize that they too have attempted to escape from reason in their own lives (sometimes probing their own dreams in an attempt to find meaning). That is the reason Gil suddenly realizes that  he is getting no where with them. Luis Bunuel did this often in his movies.

I am presently going through the characters referenced in Woody Allen’s film “Midnight in Paris.”  Luis Bunuel is a surrealist film director that is responsible for the film “Belle de Jour” which Francis Schaeffer discusses below.

In the book HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE? Schaeffer notes:

Especially in the sixties the major philosophic statements which received a wide hearing were made through films. These philosophic movies reached many more people than philosophic writings or even painting and literature. Among these films were THE LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD by Alain Resnais (1961), THE SILENCE by Ingmar Bergman (1967), JULIET OF THE SPIRITS by Federico Fellini (1965), BLOW UP by Michelangelo Antonioni (1966), BELLE DE JOUR by Luis Bunuel (1967), and THE HOUR OF THE WOLF by Ingmar Bergman (1967).

They showed pictorially (and with great force) what it is like if man is a machine and also what it is like if man tries to live in the area of non-reason. In the area of non-reason man is left without categories. He has no way to distinguish between right and wrong, or even between what is objectively true as opposed to illusion or fantasy….One could view these films a hundred times and there still would be no way to be sure what was portrayed as objectively true and what was part of a character’s imagination. if people begin only from themselves and really live in a universe in which there is no personal God to speak, they have no final way to be sure of the difference between reality and fantasy or illusion (pp. 201-203).

Belle de Jour Presentation

Uploaded on Jul 19, 2006 (run time 14:43)

(You will notice in the last part of the 14 minute clip above, it shows how the movie “Belle de Jour” ends. Even though her husband has been shot three times which was the result of the horrible friends she had associated with, he is pictured in her dreams as recovering from his wheel chair and blindness and he gladly kisses her. Francis Schaeffer  in his film series shows how this film was appealing to “nonreason” to answer our problems.)

(I got this clip from youtube and below is the paragraph by the author of the youtube clip.)

In a film class my partner and I did a video presentation on the film Belle de Jour and the filmmaker Luis Bunuel. Bunuel was a surrealist, so if the video doesn’t quite makes sense, its not supposed to.

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Catherine Deneuve, “Belle de Jour”, 1967

Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop in their book WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE? asserted concerning Woody Allen:

The thinkers in our society have been admitting for a long time that they have no final answers at all.
Take Woody Allen, for example. Most people know his as a comedian, but he has thought through where mankind stands after the “religious answers” have been abandoned. In an article in Esquire (May 1977), he says that man is left with:
… alienation, loneliness [and] emptiness verging on madness…. The fundamental thing behind all motivation and all activity is the constant struggle against annihilation and against death. It’s absolutely stupefying in its terror, and it renders anyone’s accomplishments meaningless. As Camus wrote, it’s not only that he (the individual) dies, or that man (as a whole) dies, but that you struggle to do a work of art that will last and then you realize that the universe itself is not going to exist after a period of time. Until those issues are resolved within each person – religiously or psychologically or existentially – the social and political issues will never be resolved, except in a slapdash way.
Allen sums up his view in his film Annie Hall with these words: “Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.”
Many would like to dismiss this sort of statement as coming from one who is merely a pessimist by temperament, one who sees life without the benefit of a sense of humor. Woody Allen does not allow us that luxury. He speaks as a human being who has simply looked life in the face and has the courage to say what he sees. If there is no personal God, nothing beyond what our eyes can see and our hands can touch, then Woody Allen is right: life is both meaningless and terrifying. As the famous artist Paul Gauguin wrote on his last painting shortly before he tried to commit suicide: “Whence come we? What are we? Whither do we go?” The answers are nowhere, nothing, and nowhere.

PEOPLE MIGHT EVEN WONDER WHY WOODY ALLEN KEEPS MAKING FILMS IF HE TRULY HAS A NIHILISTIC OUTLOOK ON LIFE? Woody tells us:

It’s just an accident that we happen to be on earth, enjoying our silly little moments, distracting ourselves as often as possible so we don’t have to really face up to the fact that, you know, we’re just temporary people with a very short time in a universe that will eventually be completely gone. And everything that you value, whether it’s Shakespeare, Beethoven, da Vinci, or whatever, will be gone. The earth will be gone. The sun will be gone. There’ll be nothing. The best you can do to get through life is distraction. Love works as a distraction. And work works as a distraction. You can distract yourself a billion different ways. But the key is to distract yourself.

LET ME OFFER UP ANOTHER REASON WHY WOODY ALLEN KEEPS PRODUCING MOVIES ABOUT LOVE!!!! God created us so we can’t deny that we are created for a purpose and when a person falls truly in love with another person then they have a hard time maintaining  we are only just a product of evolution and our lives have no lasting significance.

Solomon wisely noted in Ecclesiastes 3:11 “God has planted eternity in the heart of men…” (Living Bible). No wonder Bertrand Russell wrote in his autobiography, “It is odd, isn’t it? I feel passionately for this world and many things and people in it, and yet…what is it all? There must be something more important, one feels, though I don’t believe there is. I am haunted. Some ghosts, for some extra mundane regions, seem always trying to tell me something that I am to repeat to the world, but I cannot understand that message.”

Mark Twain admitted:

It is the strangest thing, that the world is not full of books that scoff at the pitiful world, and the useless universe and the vile and contemptible race–books that laugh at the whole paltry scheme and deride it…Why don’t I write such a book? Because I have a family. There is no other reason.
Notebook #29, 10 November 1895

The Clemens family from left to right: Clara, Livy, Jean, Sam, and Susy. Photo courtesy of the The Mark Twain House

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Big time director Woody Allen and wife Soon-Yi Previn along with daughters Bechet and Manzie Tio were at the Beverly Wilshire hotel in Beverly Hills, CA on June 15th, 2012

Francis Schaeffer noted in his book HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT:

So just as all men love even if they say love does not exist, and all men have moral motions even though they say moral motions do not exit, so all men act as though they there is a correlation between the external and the internal world, even if they have no basis for that correlation…Let me draw the parallel again. Modern men say there is no love, there is only sex, but they fall in love. Men say there are no moral motions, everything is behavioristic, but they all have moral motions. Even in the more profound area of epistemology, no matter what a man says he believes, actually–every moment of his life–he is acting as though Christianity were true, and it is only the Christian system that tells him why he can, must, and does act the way he does (Chapter 4, HE IS THERE AND HE IS NOT SILENT ).

WOODY ALLEN LOVES HIS FAMILY AND DEEP DOWN HE KNOWS THAT HE WAS PUT ON THIS EARTH FOR A PURPOSE!!!! The surrealists knew it too and they could not accept that life had no meaning and that is why they kept looking for meaning.

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In the film “Midnight in Paris” the character Gil discusses the future movie “The Exterminating Angel” by Bunuel with Bunuel. Below is a review of that movie.

Review of The Exterminating Angel by Augusta DaytonIf you think you’ve seen it all in cinema—wait. The Exterminating Angel by Luis Buñuel will confuse and surprise you.

The loose plot is this: during a formal dinner party, the guests and hosts realize they can’t leave the room they’re in. This may suddenly spark many questions for you, but the true talent of the movie is its ability to stick with its perplexing plot.

Buñuel is a surrealist, making the dream sequences in this film a treat for the eye. Eventually the guests take morphine which adds more surrealism to the film.

I was recently reminded of this movie in Midnight In Paris, when Owen Wilson talks to Buñuel and gives him an idea of what later becomes the Exterminating Angel. In Woody Allen’s scene, even Buñuel is confused why they can’t leave the room.

The ending is shocking and open to interpretation. I’d recommend watching this movie with a group of people to discuss the significance or lack thereof with everything that happens. If I ever had a dinner party, I’d probably project The Exterminating Angel on a wall not only for its relevance but for its interesting visuals. Did I mention there’s a pet Grizzly Bear at the party?

I really wish there was more to say about this film, but it leaves you a little speechless.

You can see the trailer here!

*There are so many cool posters for this movie so I put more than one in.

Luis Buñuel was born in Span in 1900. In studied first with Jesuits before enrolling in the University of Madrid, majoring in science. At the University he met Salvador Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca. Inspired by Fritz Lang’s film, Destiny , Buñuel went to Paris to study film during the 1920’s amidst a flourish of avant-garde experimentation. There he became an assistant to the experimental filmmaker Jean Epstein, and in 1928 collaborated with some friends including Salvador Dali on Un Chien andalou , which became a surrealist classic. It provoked a scandal, but Buñuel went on to film L’Age d’Or in 1930, creating another scandal. L’Age d’Or would also be the last time Salvador Dali would collaborate with Buñuel as he fought with Buñuel over the film’s anti-Catholicism. After L’Age d’Or , Buñuel further pursued his interests in anti-clericalism when he turned his attentions to making a documentary called Land Without Bread . (1932), studying the contrast between the poverty, disease, and death of the Spanish people and the lush, jewel-filled world of the Spanish Catholic Church. Buñuel went on to work for the foreign branches of major Hollywood studios, dubbing for Paramount in Paris and supervising co-productions for Warner Brothers in Spain. He produced several more Spanish pictures before leaving Spain for the United States during the Spanish Civil War.While in the United States, he was director of documentaries at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. He also found himself working for major Hollywood studios again as well as the U. S. government, supervising Spanish-language versions of films for MGM, making documentaries for the U. S. Army, and dubbing for Warner Brothers. Buñuel began to direct films again after a creative hiatus of almost 15 years when he went to Mexico.In association with producer Oscar Dancigers, Buñuel made a series of films, including Los olvidados (1950), El (1952), and Criminal Life of Archibaldo de la Cruz (1955). The best of these films brought Buñuel once more to international acclaim. It was with his Mexican films that Buñuel began to fully develop his unique mix of surrealist humor and social melancholy, combining a documentary sense with surrealist qualities into a loose, discontinuous form of narrative that his films would continue to follow as his career would progress. With his Mexican films, he paid especially close attention to the details of average Mexican life. Buñuel would continue to make films in Mexico, most notably Nazarin (1958), even after leaving the continent.Buñuel returned to France in 1955 to begin three co-productions that placed him in the center of cinematic art. His first opportunity to work and live in Spain came when he made Viridiana in 1961. Though his script was initially approved, the film was banned upon release due to its anticlerical images, notably Buñuel’s famous parodical shot of Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting, The Last Supper . Nevertheless the film achieved international recognition. Controversy and problems with either distribution or censorship continued to appear throughout his career, as in his French film, Belle de Jour (1967), which would later go out of distribution for many years until Martin Scorsese rereleased it in 1996. Despite the complications Buñuel continued to be one of the most creative and productive of all film directors.
 Rear Window: Buñuelian Dreams: Jean-Claude Carrière Interview

Published on Jan 20, 2016

Luis Buñuel was one of the greatest filmmakers of the 20th century. Screenwriters Emilie Bickerton and Jean-Claude Carrière discuss his 50 year career, dreams, brothels and terrorism. http://multimedia.telesurtv.net/v/rea…

Francis Schaeffer was a Christian philosopher who studied culture and made observations about people’s worldview. Below we will see three short clips from his film series “How Should we then live?” and I have included an outline. If you enjoy this work of Schaeffer then you might want to refer back to posts I did on Paul Gauguin and Henri de Toulouse Lautrec who are also in the film “Midnight in Paris.” Both Gauguin and Lautrec are from the 1890’s and they believed the golden period was not the 1890’s, but the Renaissance according to a scene in the movie “Midnight in Paris.”

A Christian Manifesto Francis Schaeffer

Published on Dec 18, 2012

A video important to today. The man was very wise in the ways of God. And of government. Hope you enjoy a good solis teaching from the past. The truth never gets old.

The Roots of the Emergent Church by Francis Schaeffer

How Should We then Live Episode 7 small (Age of Nonreason)

#02 How Should We Then Live? (Promo Clip) Dr. Francis Schaeffer

10 Worldview and Truth

Two Minute Warning: How Then Should We Live?: Francis Schaeffer at 100

Francis Schaeffer Whatever Happened to the Human Race (Episode 1) ABORTION

Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR

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The above clip is from the film series by Francis Schaeffer “How should we then live?” Below is an outline of the 8th episode on the Impressionists and the age of Fragmentation. The third part discusses surrealist films like Belle de Jour that mixes our reality with our day dreams.

You will notice in the last part of the 14 minute clip above, it shows how the movie “Belle de Jour” ends. Even though her husband has been shot three times which was the result of the horrible friends she had associated with, he is pictured in her dreams as recovering from his wheel chair and blindness and he gladly kisses her.

AGE OF FRAGMENTATION

I. Art As a Vehicle Of Modern Thought

A. Impressionism (Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Degas) and Post-Impressionism (Cézanne, Van Gogh, Gauguin, Seurat): appearance and reality.

1. Problem of reality in Impressionism: no universal.

2. Post-Impression seeks the universal behind appearances.

3. Painting expresses an idea in its own terms as a work of art; to discuss the idea in a painting is not to intellectualize art.

4. Parallel search for universal in art and philosophy; Cézanne.

B. Fragmentation.

1. Extremes of ultra-naturalism or abstraction: Wassily Kandinsky.

2. Picasso leads choice for abstraction: relevance of this choice.

3. Failure of Picasso (like Sartre, and for similar reasons) to be fully consistent with his choice.

C. Retreat to absurdity.

1. Dada , and Marcel Duchamp: art as absurd. (Dada gave birth to Surrealism).

2. Art followed philosophy but came sooner to logical end.

3. Chance in his art technique as an art theory impossible to practice: Pollock.

II. Music As a Vehicle of Modern Thought

A. Non-resolution and fragmentation: German and French streams.

1. Influence of Beethoven’s last Quartets.

2. Direction and influence of Debussy.

3. Schoenberg’s non-resolution; contrast with Bach.

4. Stockhausen: electronic music and concern with the element of change.

B. Cage: a case study in confusion.

1. Deliberate chance and confusion in Cage’s music.

2. Cage’s inability to live the philosophy of his music.

C. Contrast of music-by-chance and the world around us.

1. Inconsistency of indulging in expression of chaos when we acknowledge order for practical matters like airplane design.

2. Art as anti-art when it is mere intellectual statement, divorced from reality of who people are and the fullness of what the universe is.

III. General Culture As the Vehicle of Modern Thought

A. Propagation of idea of fragmentation in literature.

1. Effect of Eliot’s Wasteland and Picasso’s Demoiselles d’ Avignon

compared; the drift of general culture.

2. Eliot’s change in his form of writing when he became a Christian.

3. Philosophic popularization by novel: Sartre, Camus, de Beauvoir.

B. Cinema as advanced medium of philosophy.

1. Cinema in the 1960s used to express Man’s destruction: e.g. Blow-up.

2. Cinema and the leap into fantasy:

 

The Hour of the Wolf, Belle de Jour, Juliet of the Spirits,

The Last Year at Marienbad.

3. Bergman’s inability to live out his philosophy (see Cage):

Silence and The Hour of the Wolf.

IV. Only on Christian Base Can Reality Be Faced Squarely

I looked up the definition of Surrealism and here it is:

(1920s-1930s)  Surrealism was both a art and literary movement that stressed the significance of letting one’s imagination rule through the use of the sub-conscious without the hindrances of logic and normal standards.  The anti-rationalist characteristic that stemmed from the Dadaist movement was a part of Surrealism.  However, Surrealism involved more playful and spontaneous in spirit.  Ways of thinking about how a viewer perceives the world around himself helped to shape the movement.  The movement was begun in 1924 in the city Paris by Andre Breton, the author of the ‘Manifeste du surrealisme.’  His writings encouraged the expression of one’s imagination through the use of dreams.  His writings attracted many artists of the Dadaist movement.  The Surrealist movement was helped along in its development during the 1920s and 1930s with the famous artist Salvador Dali.

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Director Woody Allen and Owen Wilson on the set of "Midnight in Paris." 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics

Director Woody Allen and Owen Wilson on the set of “Midnight in Paris.”

As beguiling as a stroll around Paris on a warm spring evening — something that Owen Wilson’s character here becomes very fond of himself — Midnight in Paris represents Woody Allen’s companion piece to his The Purple Rose of Cairo, a fanciful time machine that allows him to indulge playfully in the artistic Paris of his, and many other people’s, dreams.  A sure-fire source of gentle amusement to Allen’s core audience but unlikely to connect with those with no knowledge of or feel for the Paris of the Fitzgeralds, Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Picasso, this love letter to the City of Light looks to do better-than-average business for the writer-director in the U.S. upon its May 20 release, and expectations in certain foreign territories could be even higher.

As has happened before when Allen has filmed in photogenic foreign locales — London in Match Point, Barcelona in Vicki Cristina Barcelona — the director seems stimulated by discovering the possibilities of a new environment. In fact, Allen has worked in Paris before, as a writer and actor in What’s New Pussycat? 46 years ago and in one section of Everyone Says I Love You, but this is the first time he’s given the city the royal treatment.

Granted, it’s mostly a touristic view of the city, as witness the voluptuously photographed opening montage of famous sites, but that’s entirely acceptable given that the leading characters are well-off Americans on vacation. Playing Allen’s alter ego this time around is Owen Wilson as Gil, a highly successful hack Hollywood screenwriter still young enough to feel pangs over not having seriously tested himself as a novelist.

That things may not be entirely right between Gil and his pushy fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) becomes clear early on, as the couple tours around with Inez’s friends Carol (Nina Arianda) and Paul (Michael Sheen), the latter an insufferable expert on all things cultural (that Inez’s parents are right-wingers also allows Allen to sneak in some Tea Party jokes).  “Nostalgia is denial,” Paul intones to Gil, who is keen to break off on his own to indulge his own reveries of the literary Paris that fuels his creative imagination.

Lo and behold, that night, while wandering through a quiet part of the city, Gil is invited into an elegant old car carrying some inebriated revelers. Arriving at an even more elegant party, Gil shortly finds that he’s in the company of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and that it’s Cole Porter playing the piano. Later, they end up at a bar with Ernest Hemingway, who promises to show Gil’s unfinished novel to Gertrude Stein.

And so begins a flight of fancy that allows Gil to circulate with, and receive a measure of approval from, his lifelong literary heroes, not to mention such other giants as Dali (a vastly amusing Adrien Brody), Picasso, Man Ray, T.S. Eliot and Luis Bunuel, to whom the young American gives the premise of The Exterminating Angel. If not more important, he also meets the beauteous Adriana (Marion Cotillard), the former lover of Braque and Modigliani who’s now involved with Picasso, will shortly go off with Hemingway but is also curiously receptive to Gil, who seems somehow different than everyone else.

After trying but failing to bring the balky Inez along through the midnight portal along with him, Gil keeps returning to the 1920s night after night, getting pertinent advice from Stein about his novel and becoming seriously distracted by Adriana, who herself would prefer to have lived during La Belle Epoque. Although it’s all done glibly in traditional Allen one-liner style, the format nonetheless allows the writer, who has never been shy about honoring his idols in his work, to reflect on the way people have always idealized earlier periods and cultural moments, as if they were automatically superior to whatever exists at the time.  “Surely you don’t think the ‘20s is a Golden Age?” Adriana asks a bewildered Gil, who has always been so certain of it. “It’s the present. It’s dull,” she insists.

For anyone whose historical and cultural fantasies run anywhere near those that Allen toys with here, Midnight in Paris will be a pretty constant delight. As Allen surrogates go, Wilson is a pretty good one, being so different from the author physically and vocally that there’s little possibility of the annoying traces of imitation that have sometimes afflicted other actors in such roles. Cotillard is the perfect object of Gil’s romantic and creative dreams; Kathy Bates, speaking English, French and Spanish, makes Stein into a wonderfully appealing straight-shooter, Sheen has fun with his fatuous walking encyclopedia role and McAdams is a bundle of argumentative energy in a role one is meant to find a bit off-putting. French first lady Carla Bruni is perfectly acceptable in her three scenes as a tour guide at the Rodin Museum, while Corey Stoll very nicely pulls off the trick of both sending up Hemingway’s manly pretentions and honestly conveying his core artistic values.

Darius Khondji’s cinematography evokes to the hilt the gorgeously inviting Paris of so many people’s imaginations (while conveniently ignoring the rest), and the film has the concision and snappy pace of Allen’s best work.

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Opening night, Out of Competition)
Opens: May 20 (Sony Pictures Classics)
Production: Mediapro, Versatil Cinema, Gravier Prods., Pontchartrain Prods.)
Cast: Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Michael Sheen, Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody, Carla Bruni, Nina Arianda, Kurt Fuller, Tom Hiddleston, Alison Pill, Lea Seydoux, Corey Stoll
Director-screenwriter: Woody Allen
Producers: Letty Aronson, Stephen Tenenbaum, Jaume Roures
Executive producers: Javier Mendez
Director of photography: Darius Khondji
Production designer: Anne Seibel
Costume designer: Sonia Grande
Editor: Alisa Lepselter
Rated PG-13, 94 minutes

Other posts with Woody Allen:

The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 15, Luis Bunuel)

Belle de Jour Presentation In a film class my partner and I did a video presentation on the film Belle de Jour and the filmmaker Luis Bunuel. Bunuel was a surrealist, so if the video doesn’t quite makes sense, its not supposed to. ___________________________________________________ I am presently going through the characters referenced in Woody Allen’s […]

The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 14, Henri Matisse)

I am currently going through the characters referenced in the Woody Allen movie “Midnight in Paris.” Today I am looking at Henri Matisse. Below is a press release from a museum in San Francisco:  the steins were known for their saturday evening salons, where artists, writers, musicians, intellectuals, and collectors gathered to discuss contemporary art, […]

The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 13, Amedeo Modigliani)

Adriana and Gil are seen above walking together in the movie “Midnight in Paris.” Adriana was a fictional character who was Picasso’s mistress in the film. Earlier she had been Modigliani’s mistress and later Georges Braque’s mistress before moving on to Picasso according to the film story line. Actually Picasso had taken girls from others […]

The characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 12, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel)

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The characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 11, Rodin)

The Thinker (1879–1889) is among the most recognized works in all of sculpture. In fact, below you can see Paul who constantly is showing up Gil with his knowledge about these pieces of art. He shows off while describing Rodin’s life story when all four of them are taking in “The Thinker.” However, he is […]

The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 10 Salvador Dali)

Artists and bohemians inspired Woody Allen for ‘Midnight in Paris I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that he included in the movie. Today we will look at Salvador Dali. In this clip below you will see when Picasso […]

The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 9, Georges Braque)

2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Lea Seydoux as Gabrielle in “Midnight in Paris.” Adriana and Gil are seen above walking together in the movie “Midnight in Paris.” Adriana was a fictional character who was Picasso’s mistress in the film. Earlier she had been Georges Braque’s mistress before moving on to Picasso according to […]

The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 8, Henri Toulouse Lautrec)

How Should We Then Live 7#3 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Owen Wilson as Gil in “Midnight in Paris.” Paul Gauguin and Henri Toulouse Lautrec were the greatest painters of the post-impressionists. They are pictured together in 1890 in Paris in Woody Allen’s new movie “Midnight in Paris.” My favorite philosopher Francis Schaeffer […]

The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 7 Paul Gauguin)

How Should We Then Live 7#1 Dr. Francis Schaeffer examines the Age of Non-Reason and he mentions the work of Paul Gauguin. 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Kurt Fuller as John and Mimi Kennedy as Helen in “Midnight in Paris.” I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am […]

The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 6 Gertrude Stein)

Midnight In Paris – SPOILER Discussion by What The Flick?! Associated Press Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in 1934 This video clip below discusses Gertrude Stein’s friendship with Pablo Picasso: I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that […]

The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 5 Juan Belmonte)

2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Gad Elmaleh as Detective Tisserant in “Midnight in Paris.” I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers and artists that he included in the movie. Juan Belmonte was the most famous bullfighter of the time […]

The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 4 Ernest Heminingway)

  Woody Allen explores fantasy world with “Midnight in Paris” 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway in “Midnight in Paris.” The New York Times Ernest Hemingway, around 1937 I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” by Woody Allen and I am going through the whole list of famous writers […]

The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 3 Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald)

What The Flick?!: Midnight In Paris – Review by What The Flick?! 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Alison Pill as Zelda Fitzgerald and Tom Hiddleston as F. Scott Fitzgerald in “Midnight in Paris.” 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony Pictures Classics Owen Wilson as Gil in “Midnight in Paris.” 2011 Roger Arpajou / Sony […]

The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 2 Cole Porter)

The song used in “Midnight in Paris” I am going through the famous characters that Woody Allen presents in his excellent movie “Midnight in Paris.” This series may be a long one since there are so many great characters. De-Lovely – Movie Trailer De-Lovely – So in Love – Kevin Kline, Ashley Judd & Others […]

The Characters referenced in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris” (Part 1 William Faulkner)

Photo by Phill Mullen The only known photograph of William Faulkner (right) with his eldest brother, John, was taken in 1949. Like his brother, John Faulkner was also a writer, though their writing styles differed considerably. My grandfather, John Murphey, (born 1910) grew up in Oxford, Mississippi and knew both Johncy and “Bill” Faulkner. He […]

I love Woody Allen’s latest movie “Midnight in Paris”

I love the movie “Midnight in Paris” was so good that I will be doing a series on it. My favorite Woody Allen movie is Crimes and Misdemeanors and I will provide links to my earlier posts on that great movie. Movie Guide the Christian website had the following review: MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is the […]

Solomon, Woody Allen, Coldplay and Kansas (Coldplay’s spiritual search Part 6)

Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago: Solomon, Woody Allen, Coldplay and Kansas What does King Solomon, the movie director Woody Allen and the modern rock bands Coldplay and Kansas have in common? All four took on the issues surrounding death, the meaning of life and a possible afterlife, although they all came up with their own conclusions on […]

Insight into what Coldplay meant by “St. Peter won’t call my name” (Series on Coldplay’s spiritual search, Part 3)

Coldplay seeks to corner the market on earnest and expressive rock music that currently appeals to wide audiences Here is an article I wrote a couple of years ago about Chris Martin’s view of hell. He says he does not believe in it but for some reason he writes a song that teaches that it […]

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