Monday, October 26, 2026
By Peter Hummers on October 13, 2022
As I was preparing my recent column on Woody Allen, a friend suggested I watch his 2011 romantic fantasy Midnight in Paris, which turned out, to my delight, to be an exercise in “magic realism,” like his 1985 film The Purple Rose of Cairo, which I saw in a theatre back in the day. Magic realism emerged in the 1920s in German fiction, spreading to cinema; it features supernatural elements added to realistic narratives for a variety of reasons, often to depict subjectivity in principal characters. It’s often more fun than a barrel of talking monkeys!
Woody Allen, who was born in the Bronx and raised in Brooklyn, is a New Yorker to his bones: the city features in most of his earlier films as a character by itself; in 1979 the borough of Manhattan was the title character in his black-and-white homage to the city.
But like an increasing amount of New Yorkers, Woody has essentially become an expatriate; at least, he has moved his filming to Europe. When he had difficulty funding his 2005 psychological thriller Match Point in New York, he quickly rewrote it and shot it in Britain, and his dwindling audiences perked up.
Midnight in Paris, his most successful film to date, is set not only in the City of Lights, but also, simultaneously, the twenty-first century, the 1920’s, and La Belle Époque of the 1870’s. It begins with a stupendously colorful tour of Paris, in stark contrast to the black-and-white Manhattan, and stars Owen Wilson (channeling a typical Woody Allen character) as Gil Pender, a successful but ambitious screenwriter vacationing in Paris with his fiancée Inez, her rich Republican parents, who are openly contemptuous of Gil, and her equally annoying friends, a cultured know-it-all who knows nothing, and his wife.
Gil is writing a novel about a man who operates a “nostalgia shop,” and is thrilled to be in Paris, which in the ’twenties was the home of some of the twentieth century’s greatest writers and artists, also mostly expats.
Excusing himself from the group, Gil spends a night walking around the historic streets. As midnight sounds, a 1920’s car pulls alongside, into which he’s beckoned: Come to the party! He finds himself at a party for Jean Cocteau attended by notable people of the 1920s Paris art scene: Cole Porter (Yves Heck), Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston) and his wife Zelda (Alison Pill). Zelda gets bored and encourages Scott and Gil to leave with her. They first head to Bricktops, where they see Josephine Baker dancing, and then to a cafe where they run into Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll). After Zelda and Scott leave, Gil and Hemingway discuss writing, and Hemingway offers to show Gil’s novel to Gertrude Stein. But as Gil exits the building to fetch his manuscript from his hotel, he finds he’s returned to 2010: the cafe where he encountered Hemingway is now a laundromat.
These characters, who are gradually revealed to Gil, are portrayed by actors who very much resemble them; I spotted a few before they were introduced, and had as much fun as Gil. Scott Fitzgerald recalls Nick Carraway, the superficially alter-ego narrator of his The Great Gatsby. Zelda is unfocused and impetuous, and Hemingway finds a way to tell everyone what a man’s man he is. Cathy Bates appears as Gertrude Stein and Marcial Di Fonzo Bo plays Pablo Picasso (who reminds me a little of Chico Marx).
Like Match Point, Midnight in Paris has been called a “return to form” for Woody; it’s certified 93% “fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes, and even the French like it, as attested to in this review in Le Figaro.
Woody wrote and directed The Purple Rose of Cairo as a hardcore film fan; in it a New Jersey waitress escapes her bleak life and abusive husband at the movies. It’s set during the Great Depression, in 1935, when the movies provided a cheap way to forget one’s troubles, and Cecelia (Mia Farrow) takes every opportunity to do so, sitting through the movie in the movie, The Purple Rose of Cairo, several times.
“Like Cecilia, Woody Allen grew up an obsessive moviegoer who soaked in the pictures that played in his Brooklyn, New York neighborhood. Allen’s favorite movie theater palace as a boy was the last-run Kent, home of 12-cent films, which he called ‘one of the great, meaningful places of my boyhood.’ Before the Kent was torn down, Allen created his own homage to this beloved picture palace by filming part of The Purple Rose of Cairo there. Writing in The St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia, Mark Estrin notes the significance of film-going in the movie, ‘Like Manhattan (1979) before it, and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Radio Days (1987) after it, The Purple Rose of Cairo examines the healing power of popular art.’”[TCM.com]
Once Cecelia clocks out from her dreary job she heads over to the “Jewel” movie palace, which is bathed in nostalgic gold; when the curtain goes up on the silver screen and the elegant locales, people and situations of the film, she’s transported as a character says, “[We’ll go] to Cairo and Morocco and Tangiers, to all the exotic and romantic places in the world.”
When a distracted Cecelia is finally fired from the restaurant, she spends the day in the movie theatre, and during her fifth viewing, one of the characters in the film, “Tom Baxter” (Jeff Daniels, Godless, The Looming Tower), looks into the camera and through the fourth wall at Cecelia, and says, “My God, you must really love this picture. You’ve been here all day, and I’ve seen you twice before.
“Listen, I’ve got to speak with you.” And Tom Baxter steps out of the film, from black and white to color, amid screams from the audience (and from in the film), and strides over to Cecelia’s seat. “Who are you?”
Enchanted, she manages, “C-C-Cecelia.”
“Let’s get out of here and go somewhere where we can talk.”
“But you’re in the movie!”
“Wrong, Cecelia, I’m free! After 2,000 performances of the same monotonous routine, I’m free!”
But when the producer of the film hears that “Tom” has “left the film,” he flies from California to New Jersey with actor Gil Shepherd (Daniels), who played Tom in the film, to see if they can’t get their rogue character to see reason and return to the film. But Tom has declared his love for Cecelia.
93% “fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes. Thomas Rafferty, reviewing the movie for Sight and Sound in 1985, said “Everything in this movie makes heavenly sense.”
(Pete Hummers is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to earn fees by linking Amazon.com and affiliate sites. This adds nothing to Amazon’s prices.)
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