Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen is fantastic at staging dialogue passages that demand a lot from the actors, but when it works out, it's beautiful. The actors for this project were brilliantly chosen and the film is flawless in its formal style. Owen Wilson's Gill is perfect as a torn artist who is smarter in his mind than in spoken words, the superficial characters are detailed and iconic, just like Hermes Birkin, playing a supporting role, and the "golden age characters" are timeless and warming, supported by excellently fitting sets and period music. The outcome is not as cathartic as most of the audience would probably want, but I think Woody is just playing and teasing with the viewer in this case, there was no deeper intention here, Paris is enchanting even in this rendition. Perhaps slightly self-indulgent and unnecessary, but a refined and formally grandiose film that is intelligent enough to be liked. (2013-01-27)

Woody Allen is certainly an American, but he has always somewhat defied the idea of a typical American because he belongs to the circle of New York liberals who have always been culturally closer to Europe than to the American South or Midwest. In Europe, his intellectually-oriented work was also more embraced by audiences than in America. Woody makes fun of this in his film Hollywood Ending, where a blind director makes a film that, for understandable reasons, makes no sense, and when the American studio throws it overboard, the film receives recognition at a European film festival and also from European viewers. In the later stage of his career, Woody truly fell in love with Paris, and when he decided to leave his beloved New York, he began creating there. This film is nothing more than a tribute to Paris as a cultural center and a city with an amazing history, and the whole gimmick tries to sell the viewer as many famous figures of European culture that once passed through Paris in the 1920s. He chose this period so he could showcase his favorite musical melodies. Unfortunately, it had to happen one day - my favorite director Woody, to whom I usually give 4 stars, even in the weaker films that I forget about after a few days, managed to reliably entertain me only to the level of three stars this time. I am not surprised by Woody thematically or in the choice of actors, but somehow I didn't enjoy this panoply of characters, and in the first half, I was downright bored. The second half is a bit better, but even the few functioning jokes were not particularly original, and during Allen's overproduction, I remembered them from other films. It is a pleasant film, but I just could not get into it. Overall impression: 45%. (2014-05-04)

I've noticed that Woody Allen's films tend to be more enjoyable for me when their neurotic author doesn't make an appearance. In this case, Owen Wilson's portrayal of Gil evoked too much of Allen's essence for my liking. The romantic entanglements and the trajectory of relationships in the storyline weren't particularly challenging to decipher. The only thing left was time travel, which didn't do it for me this time around. Personally, I've never felt the desire to visit Paris; perhaps because it's surrounded by France and predominantly inhabited by the French, a combination that doesn't quite resonate with me. And I didn't even know that I could experience guillotining or a plague epidemic there if I chose the right kind of transport at midnight. / Lesson learned: Reminiscing can be nice, but there's a limit. (2022-07-11)

Woody is a magician. As a lover of Paris and an admirer of old times, I got lost somewhere between the opening titles and the first dialogue. Not that I expected anything else after a discreet whisper announcing a little masterpiece, but the dreamy atmosphere, the sexy Marion Cotillard, and Owen Wilson in an image á la young Allen? This is how you take the breath away from devoted fans. Manhattan has an equally fascinating sequel after more than thirty years. (2011-10-10)

A very nice film. It's not perfect, and it can't match the atmosphere of The Purple Rose of Cairo, but I watched it for an hour and a half with a permanent smile, and that's to be appreciated. Woody Allen's screenplay seems to combine the magic of two of his short stories - “A Twenties Memory", in which he recounts his experiences with Hemingway, Stein, Picasso, Toklas and others, and the excellent “The Kugelmass Episode", whose protagonist starts cheating on his wife with Madame Bovary thanks to an illusionist. Midnight in Paris is an enjoyable watch that could have been more elaborate (especially when it comes to the book Gil buys and reads about himself in), but its idea about the desire to live in other times at the expense of the present and especially its ending are so beautiful that almost all the criticisms had to be put aside. (2014-08-10)