Just saw MIDNIGHT IN
PARIS for the third time and couldn’t help marveling at the ingenuity of Woody
Allen in keeping things simple while bringing us face-to-face with that whole
magilla of authors and artist expatriates from the 1920s.
It’s midnight in the Paris of
today. An aspiring author played by Owen Wilson sees a mysterious yellow car
approaching from out of the mist. Filled with rowdies looking for a good time,
the car stops in front of him. He decides
to get in. It takes him to a Parisian bar and he goes inside.
WHAMMO—suddenly Wilson is drinking
and rubbing elbows with Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Zelda, Alice B. Toklas,
Gertrude Stein, and cozying up to the mistress of Picasso. Later he meets
Salvadore Dali, Bunuel, Man Ray, T.S. Elliot.
While we struggle with magical devices
like time machines and space ships and complicated portals and flashbacks and
flash forwards, Woody Allen chose the everyday simplicity of a car to move us
backward almost a century in time. Sure it was exotic—that strikingly yellow
1925 Peugeot Type 176 sedan.
But that yellow car got us to where
Woody Allen wanted us to go. No long, perilous journey through space. No
feeling we didn’t belong. Just as natural as stepping into a hybrid for a trip
to the office or the Mall. Absolutely
brilliant.
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