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Dream In the Past — Analysis of Midnight in Paris, Final

What makes films so fascinating is that, in the short 100-year history of film, people keep craving for more and more movies. The stories in the movies draw people to the cinema. But why? The reason is that these stories are depicted in many different ways, using different methods. By the use of mise-en-scene which comprises design elements such as lighting, setting, props, costumes, and makeup within individual shots, breaking the pattern and many other strategies. Filmmakers can express their content and theme in a subtler way but at the same time viewers still can find bits and threads of the implicit meaning underneath.

One great example of the use of these strategies would be Midnight in Paris directed by Woody Allen.  It’s a typical narrative story about a Hollywood screenwriter who dreamed of living in Paris in the 1920s.  Surprisingly, he actually travels back to the Golden Age after midnight in Paris. The story also adds elements of a love story as its explicit meaning in the protagonist’s relationship with his fiancé and the girl he met in 1920’s Paris. To open the story, Woody Allen uses a total of 60 shots with a classic French chanson Si Tu Vois Ma Mere as background music to show the beauty of Paris from day to night. The color temperature of the whole image is changed into a warm yellow combined with areas of green, displaying a sense of typical romantic nostalgia in France. The images sets a relaxing and romantic tone for the whole story. When the audiences are still hooked by the beautiful opening scenes around Paris, Gil, the protagonist, starts to express his love for this city. The inner-conversation that the audiences are having are now being expressed through the protagonist’s mouth. This creates a resonance and a bridge among the protagonist and audiences, transmitting the shared emotion at that point. Furthermore, when Inez, Gil’s fiancé, is added in the conversation, the disconnection between the two characters’ value gives the viewers an insight of what might happen to their engagement at the end of the story. All of these little fragments combining together, is representative of using mise-en-scene.

   

   

   

Right after Gil talks about “how drop-dead gorgeous [Paris] is in the rain…[and] the artists, the writers [in the twenties]”, he also mentions that he would give up everything in Beverly Hills just to move and write in Paris. With running credit on the screen, the black and white leaves a huge space of imagination to the audience. But with the argument against Gil, Inez’s voice breaks the imagination into reality. She doesn’t understand “What is so great about rain?” and, “What is good about getting wet?”  By bringing up the conflicts between Gil and Inez, the conflicts between dream and reality also heat up along the way. Woody Allen’s portrait of Gil’s characteristics as a “successful” screenwriter for popular Hollywood movies who dreams to live in the 20s and wishes to have a serious time writing his own novel provides the audience a link to one of the most famous writers in the 20s, Scott Fitzgerald. Both of them share the story of a writer who has a lovely but crazy wife, and who is forced to waste their talent in producing popular readings (movies in Gil’s case) in order to provide his wife a luxurious life. Both of these men eventually regret bowing to the wants of their wives and decide to write novels of their own  era. The parallel story lines between the two characters inside and outside the story foreshadows that Gil might have the same sad ending as Scott Fitzgerald did.

   

   

   

However, after his adventure in the 20s and the further past times, Gil’s dream about the past breaks down and he makes the decision to break up with his fiancé. When the bell at the midnight rings again, Gil walks on the street alone and meets a girl he saw in the vintage records shop. Her name is Adriana, which is the same as the name of the girl Gil met in the 20s. In the contrast with his former fiancé, Adriana doesn’t mind walking in the rain in the middle of the night. Instead, she actually thinks that Paris is even more beautiful when it’s raining. The sound of the bell is a sign that triggers the audiences to think back to the time when Gil’s adventure to 20s might begin again. However, Adriana’s existence in this scene breaks the pattern of traveling back to the past. This time the bell is the sign that Gil is willing to take a step ahead and go to the future.

   

   

Throughout the movie, the settings and costumes leave hits to the audience of which period of the time the story is happening. When Gil first travels through time to the 20s, the yellow car is an iconic symbol of the famous representation of 20s art work, The Great Gatsby. This yellow car then continuously recurring in the following two times when Gil travels back in time. The people in the car are half-way drunk, speak French, having champagne in their hands. All of these details drop the hit that something unusual is happening. After arriving to the party, the art-décor style of the room, women dressing like flappers, and the music in the background all serve the purpose of recreating a world in the 1920s. The famous characters the Gil meets during his adventure all have distinctive details to help audience differentiate each one of them: Zelda Fitzgerald has blond short curly hair and always has a glass of liquor in her hand; Hemingway doesn’t shave and dresses much more casual than the other artists; Dali has his crazy mustache and iconic skull cane. After the third time Gil goes back to the 20s, he accidentally travels to the 1870s with Adriana. Similar with the first two times he travels, this time it also starts with some kind of transportation. However, this time it’s a coupe, identical with most common transportation people use back in the La Belle Époque. At the same time, the way people dress also have a dramatic change. Women’s dresses in heavy and complicated big gown with cortex and huge hats decorated with feathers instead of long, straight,  and loose skirts.

   

   

   

   

   

As the storyline of the movie takes form Woody Allen uses all the resources and strategies to create an adventure across the present and the past which in the end lead to the future. All the music, costumes, languages, and settings contribute to achieve one goal: establishing the illusion of bringing what is on screen into the reality.