Midnight in Paris is a 2011 American romantic fantasy comedy adventure film directed by Woody Allen and produced by Letty Aronson, Stephen Tenenbaum and Jaume Roures. The screenplay was written by Woody Allen.
Rated: PG-13 (movie contains some sexual references and smoking)
Run Time: 1h 34min
Release Date: June 10, 2011 (USA)
Genre: Adventure, Romance, Comedy, Fantasy
Director: Woody Allen
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
Midnight in Paris stars Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Kathy Bates, Adrien Brody, Carla Bruni, Michael Sheen, Tom Hiddleston, Corey Stoll, Alison Pill, Kurt Fuller, Lea Seydoux, Nina Arianda, Olivier Rabourdin, David Lowe and Francois Rostain.
Midnight in Paris is the story of Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), a successful but creatively unfulfilled Hollywood screenwriter who is vacationing in Paris with his fiance Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her wealthy, conservative parents. Gil is an aspiring novelist struggling to finish his first novel, centered on a man who works in a nostalgia shop. Inez dismisses his ambition as a romantic daydream and encourages him to stick with lucrative screenwriting.
Gil falls in love with the city and each night he goes out and tours Paris alone. Gil believes that the golden age of Paris was in the 1920’s and he loves to walk through the streets of the city. After a night out with Inez and her old boyfriend, the pseudo-intellectual Paul (Michael Sheen) and his girlfriend Carol (Nina Arianda), Gil decides to walk back to the hotel alone. At midnight an old car stops and the passengers invite him to go to a party and soon he realizes he is back in the 20’s, where he meets his favorite writers, musicians and artists and lives his dream.
On subsequent evenings, Gil comes to the realization that he can travel back to this, his dream setting, at midnight every night at the exact location transported by that 1920’s vehicle. Subsequently, he meets and befriends the elite of Paris arts and culture of the time, including Cole Porter (Yves Heck), Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll), Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates), Pablo Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo) and Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody).
Gil initially plans to share this revelation with Inez, until he meets Adriana (Marion Cotillard), a muse of Picasso’s. There is a seemingly mutual attraction between Adriana and Gil. Although he would love for his midnight trips to last forever, his time especially with Adriana shows Gil what he truly is striving for in his present twenty-first century life.
Movie Quotes
“I believe that love that is true and real, creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving or not loving well, which is the same thing. And then the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face, like some rhino-hunters I know or Belmonte, who is truly brave… It is because they make love with sufficient passion, to push death out of their minds… until it returns, as it does, to all men… and then you must make really good love again.” – Ernest Hemingway
“Nostalgia is denial – denial of the painful present… the name for this denial is golden age thinking – the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one ones living in – its a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present.” – Paul
“The artist’s job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.” – Gertrude Stein
“If you stay here and this becomes your present, then pretty soon you’ll start imagining another time was really the golden time. That’s, you know, what the present is. It’s a little unsatisfying because life’s a little unsatisfying.” – Gil
Official Movie Trailer
Movie Stars
Owen Wilson as Gil Pender
Rachel McAdams as Inez
Marion Cotillard as Adriana
Kathy Bates as Gertrude Stein
Adrien Brody as Salvador Dali
Carla Bruni as Museum Guide
Michael Sheen as Paul
Tim Hiddleston as F. Scott Fitzgerald
Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway
Alison Pill as Zelda Fitzgerald
Kurt Fuller as John
Lea Seydoux as Gabrielle
Nina Arianda as Carol
Olivier Rabourdin as Paul Gauguin
David Lowe as T.S. Eliot
Francois Rostain as Edgar Degas