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Driven by the national pride of the French
"I don't know anything about Paris." Allen admitted during his first meeting with French producers to make a film in the French capital. He asked himself what his first impression was (romance, of course) when he thought of Paris. So he settled on the title of the film, Midnight in Paris, although at that time he did not have any ideas for the story.
"For months, I asked myself, what would happen in Paris at midnight? Someone met and fell in love? Or is it an adventure for two? And so, one day I suddenly had an idea: a man was visiting Paris, and while out for a walk at night, he came across a carriage, he got into the carriage and set out on a real adventure. "
Allen originally wanted to shoot the film in 2006, but the cost was so high that he had to give up. In 2009, the French government refunded some of the tax, and Allen's sister and current producer, Retty Allenson, managed to cut the budget and limit the film's spending to eighteen million dollars. The film's protagonist, Jill, was originally an East Coast intellectual, and Juliette Taylor recommended Owen Wilson, who Allen said was "a lot like a villa and surfboard on the beach", so Allen rewrote the script and turned the protagonist into a character from Los Angeles.
And the choice to play Jill's difficult and demanding fiancée, Allen identified Rachel McAdams from the beginning. And Marion Cotillard entered the crew as a supporting role much like Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz entered the group in "Midnight in Barcelona", and she was almost brought into the group by a French national pride.
On the other hand, Allen decided to choose the little-known actor as Hemingway after watching the performance in "A Glimpse on the Bridge" directed by Arthur Miller co-starring Corrie Stoll and Scarlett Johansson. "He gave me a couple of pages of Hemingway's dialogue." Stoll explains, "I saw Hemingway on the paper and felt my fingers burn."
Spoof a group of cultural celebrities
The filming of the film went quickly (7 weeks in the summer of 2010, a total of 35 days, Allen loved the gray sky and wet sidewalks. "I want people to be able to get into the atmosphere of Paris," he said. Allen consulted with director of photography Dareth Conji about using black and white to represent the scene from the twenties, but in the end they decided to use color. "People always have the feeling that if you can live in a different era, everything will be better".
If you look back, for example, the era of Kiki, you will think that it was the Paris of the Belle Époque, with horses, wooden carts, steam lamps, everything is wonderful. Then you find out that if you go to the dentist, he doesn't have novocaine, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. Women die during childbirth, when there are all kinds of serious problems. If you were an aristocrat of your time and lived in Paris, that would be a big improvement, but if you weren't in the upper class, or if you were Jewish, your fate wouldn't be so good. But you don't know that. ”
The real surprise wasn't that Woody Allen made a success in 2011 with a film about the joys and pitfalls of nostalgia, but that he didn't do it early in the morning. Of all the scripts commissioned by foreign organizations, "Midnight in Paris" feels the most like it can appear at any point in Allen's career. Following this idea, we trace back to those witty comedies of the 1980s. For example, imagining "The Legend of Xili" that befriended Fitzgerald, or even going back to Allen's time as a stand-up comedy, his improvisations associated with Hemingway.
"Hemingway had just finished writing two stories about boxing, and while Gertrude Stein and I felt it was acceptable, we felt it needed some revision. He wrote in his Memoirs of the 20s. This is a short story published in the 1971 episode of Getting Fair, "We laughed and had a great time, and then we put on boxing gloves and he broke my nose.
The audience likes it
Like the Legend of Xili and The Purple Rose of Cairo, the story "MacGuffin has no explanation." Just look at Owen Wilson's look of amazement at the sight of Josephine Baker, or the radiant at the idea of asking Hemingway to read his novel, and Wilson got what few actors get: justice for the wavering book music in Allen's writing. In addition, the combination of confusion and charm of Jill's character becomes his own.
Wilson seemed simple, but not stupid, and some thoughtful complaints with Yiddish-leaning tendencies that came out of his mouth were philosophical and urgent. David Edelstein wrote in New York magazine that "stuttering is not a comedy element in this movie."
Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston) and Zelda (Alison, Peel) disagree with Allen's somewhat chaotic drama-writing skills (they disappear immediately after they appear), but it is possible that this was to allow Cole, Stoll's Hemingway to appear earlier, and his Hemingway perfectly shows playful parody ("Timidity comes from not loving, or not loving well, both are the same.") And using a tone that others make when they play with his chest hair.
And as the beauty in this movie, Marion Cotillard seems a little uncomfortable. Basically, she, like her character in Inception, is a mermaid, and she convinces Jill to keep him addicted in dreams within dreams. Allen's slightly unusual editing rhythm in the film didn't help Cotillard: her and Wilson's rivalry scenes were so slow-paced that they looked like a combination of split-shots. Allen, who is in his seventies, feels like trying not to disturb a fawn approaching when shooting a romantic film.
It doesn't matter. The film was Woody Allen's first film to exceed 100 million at the global box office and became one of the ten most watched films in the seven weeks after its premiere. This phenomenon makes many frightened people constantly ask themselves, why on earth? But more important than the box office (after accounting for inflation, "Midnight in Paris" is the seventh-highest-grossing film of Allen's directorial career, after "Banana" and "Love and Death"), more important is the real pleasure Allen enjoys because of the success of this film, which is his most Oscar-nominated film after "Bullets on Broadway".
The film received four nominations and eventually won an award for Best Original Screenplay. This is Woody Allen's third time winning the award after sixteen nominations, making it the oldest and only recipient of the award to win it three times. In the past, such an achievement was enough for Allen to ignore a series of criticisms and protests that he was forced to adopt a comedic ending in his film when he was mentally fragile while thinking about the next film: a provocative satirical film that caters to popular tastes. What we see, however, is Allen's humble acceptance of the wishes of the masses. "There's nothing happier for me than to make the audience like it." Allen told The Hollywood Reporter that this is always a pleasant thing. ”