Woody Allen Without Woody Allen: Midnight in Paris & Vicky Cristina Barcelona

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When I was young, I saw most of Woody Allen’s early movies in bits and pieces on television: Sleeper, Bananas, Annie Hall, Love and Death, etc. There were funny bits, but mostly I found them vulgar and stupid. And Woody Allen himself was repulsive. “What a nerd,” I thought. “Won’t this guy shut up?” I wondered. “What’s wrong with this guy?”

When I was an undergraduate, I saw The Purple Rose of Cairo in a film series. I found it captivating right up to the ending, which I found downright evil. Interestingly enough, none of the film’s content stayed with me. (That might be because the film was quite funny. When I find something hilarious, it doesn’t get filed in my long-term memory. Thus I only remember bad jokes.) The only thing I remember about The Purple Rose of Cairo is my reaction to it: a sense of deep moral uncleanliness. I had no desire to watch Woody Allen ever again.

When I was in graduate school, a friend showed me Zelig (1983), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989). He also read me excepts from some of Allen’s prose, which I found genuinely hilarious. I thought Zelig and Hannah and Her Sisters were brilliant, but again, I remember almost nothing about them. We also watched something called Deconstructing Harry (1997), which I didn’t like and again can’t remember clearly. (Was there a Star Wars bar mitzvah in it, or was that some other film?)

Crimes and Misdemeanors, however, made a powerful impression. It is a genuinely serious film. I devoted a whole lecture on it in a class I taught on philosophy and film in 2000. My abiding impression, however, is negative, for Crimes and Misdemeanors is the story of a Jewish ophthalmologist played by Martin Landau who has his gentile mistress murdered and then settles back quite comfortably in his overwhelmingly Jewish social milieu. Again, I felt the presence of something morally unclean, an impression buttressed by the fact that I read Kevin MacDonald’s trilogy that year. I never bothered with another Woody Allen movie for nearly 25 years.

In the following years, I heard more about Woody Allen’s personal life than his films. What I learned merely cemented my revulsion. Allen seemed to have become another Terrence Malick, drawing upon a seemingly endless fund of prestige to make films with all-star casts that nobody watches and that seldom make any money. (Is it some sort of money laundering scheme?)

Given all this, I was floored when I learned recently that Woody Allen has now directed 50 films, most of which I had not only never seen but never even heard of. Even more shocking, however, is the fact that at least some of these films are quite good. (I want to thank my friend Sally for introducing me to them.) I’ve only watched four of them so far: Midnight in Paris (2011), Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008), Blue Jasmine (2013), and Coup de Chance (2023).

If you don’t like Woody Allen, I’ve got good news for you: he doesn’t appear in any of these films. Another factor that encouraged me to take a chance on these films is that they are all relatively short, clocking in at just over 90 minutes apiece. I’ll deal with the first two here. Both films have been out for years, so there will be spoilers, but I will leave plenty of surprises should you choose to watch them.

I’ll begin with Midnight in Paris because it’s the best of the lot and Allen’s most commercially successful film: a romantic comedy with a fantasy element. Owen Wilson plays Gil Pender, a screenwriter on vacation in Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and her parents, all rich California WASPs.

But they might as well be in two different cities. Gil is serious about art. Thus, he idolizes the Paris of the interwar era when it was the haunt of fellow expat artists like Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Cole Porter, Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, and Luis Buñuel. Inez and her parents see Paris as the city of glamour and expensive pleasures, although they find the food, service, and even the wine inferior to what they enjoy back in back home in California. Philistines.

Gil wants to do novels not just screenplays. Given his dissatisfaction with his current life and longing for the past, it is no surprise that he is working on a novel about nostalgia. Gil wants to produce significant work, even if he has to live in a garret in Paris to do it. Inez, however, wants him to continue to write commercial works for Hollywood, so he can support her in her accustomed style. It is the classic conflict between the bourgeois and bohemian. (When it comes to the conflicts between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, both sides have their merits, but I side with the aristocracy. When it comes to conflicts between the bourgeoisie and the bohemians, both sides have their merits, but I side with the bourgeoisie.)

One day, at the stroke of midnight, Gil boards an old-fashioned limousine and is whisked away to the Paris of his dreams. There he meets Hemingway, Stein, Porter, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, Dalí, and many more, all of them brilliantly and amusingly portrayed. He also meets the woman of his dreams, Adriana (Marion Cotillard), who shares his artistic and bohemian sensibilities.

Owen wants to stay with her in the Paris of the twenties, but it is not meant to be, for Adriana thinks her own times pale in comparison to the Paris of the Belle Époque, to which both are whisked in a horse-drawn carriage. There, at the Moulin Rouge, they encounter Toulouse-Lautrec, Gaugin, and Degas. Adriana wants to remain. Gil is heartbroken. But he does not remain in the 1920s. He concludes that he needs to face life in his own time. Thus, a happy ending is contrived. Gil will remain in Paris and maybe even write great books. At his side will be a more suitable mate, Gabrielle, an antiques dealer played by Léa Seydoux.

I tried to resist Midnight in Paris, but I just couldn’t. It is an almost perfect comedy. Gil has some lines that you can imagine Woody Allen uttering, but he has an admirable seriousness and sincerity that Allen himself could not pull off. For me, the most surprising aspect of Midnight in Paris is its healthy moral core. Allen mocks pretentiousness and Philistinism, but nothing of genuine value.

Like all great comedies, Midnight in Paris has a serious, bittersweet element: Gil’s recognition that he needs to live in his own time. It would have been all too easy for Allen to have sneered at Gil’s and Adriana’s desires to escape into the past with the standard Leftist clichés about “idealization” and grim rehearsals of injustices. Instead, Allen depicts the past as a genuinely better world, at least in terms of art. But when Adriana wants to escape into a different past, Gil realizes that happiness must be won by facing the world, not escaping it.

Escape into the past, in other words, is fleeing reality for fantasy. Art, of course, is the highest form of fantasy. Thus this is a movie about the place of art in life. Art is an important part of life. For some it is a way of life. But art should not be allowed to consume life, as it does for many artists who are lauded as role models. Thus Midnight in Paris does justice to both bohemian romanticism and bourgeois realism. I didn’t expect this sort of sober and salutary message from Woody Allen.

In some ways, Vicky Cristina Barcelona seems like a sketch for Midnight in Paris, which came out three years later. Vicky Cristina Barcelona too is a romantic comedy featuring a glamorous European city, rich American Philistines, artists and aspiring artists, and the conflict between the bourgeois and the bohemian ways of life. But Vicky Cristina Barcelona puts love and fidelity at the center of the plot, contrasting monogamy and commitment (strengths of the bourgeois characters) with polyamory and flakiness (to which the bohemians are drawn).

Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) are two young American women. They are best friends, united by their love of art. Vicky is doing a master’s on “Catalan identity,” inspired by her love of Gaudí. Cristina has written, directed, and acted in a 12-minute movie, which she then hated. The women are divided, however, by their attitudes toward romance. Vicky is attracted to stable and honorable men, hence her engagement to Doug (Chris Messina). Cristina is just the opposite. For her, genuine attraction is caught up with risk, drama, and pain. Vicky is logical and analytical. Cristina follows her emotions. Vicky is the more bourgeois character. Cristina is the more bohemian.

Vicky has bourgeois ties. The girls have been invited to spend the summer in Barcelona by Mark and Judy Nash, two of Vicky’s wealthy relatives. Vicky’s fiancé, Doug, is an up-and-coming bourgeois and something of a Philistine. (Both Mark and Doug golf, for instance. Doug also scoffs at modern art.)

Both women are soon tested when they meet Juan Antonio (played by Javier Bardem), a brooding Spanish painter who is especially attractive to Cristina when she hears about his tempestuous relationship with his ex-wife Maria Elena (played by Penélope Cruz), who ended up trying to kill him. Juan Antonio propositions both women at once. Vicky is incensed, Cristina intrigued.

Juan Antonio offers to fly both women to Oviedo for the weekend. Cristina accepts, and, much to our surprise, so does Vicky, perhaps to chaperone her friend. When Juan Antonio asks the ladies to his room, Vicky refuses and Cristina accepts. Before anything can happen, however, Cristina gets sick.

While Cristina recovers in her hotel, Vicky spends time with Juan Antonio, meets his father, and begins to see that this brooding artist/Lothario is actually a very strong and decent man, the traits she admires in Doug. At which point she allows herself to be seduced, which of course creates a great deal of conflict.

Back in Barcelona and fully recovered, Cristina moves in with Juan Antonio, who is soon joined by Maria Elena, fresh from a suicide attempt. Eventually, the three of them end up in a relationship that seems to work for all of them. Maria Elena and Juan Antonio, in particular, attain a harmony they never managed on their own. Meanwhile, Vicky’s fiancé Doug comes to Barcelona, and they tie the knot right there.

Just when it seems that a happy ending is being contrived, Cristina decides she needs to leave. Unfortunately, the kind of flakiness that made it possible for her to get into a ménage-à-trois in the first place also makes it impossible for her to maintain it. Whereas Vicky would never be irresponsible enough to try such a relationship, she has the character necessary to make it work.

Once Cristina is gone, Juan Antonio and Maria Elena rapidly break up. Vicky, now a married woman, is sorely tempted to cheat with Juan Antonio. But when Maria Elena shows up with a gun, trying to kill Juan Antonio again and wounding Vicky’s hand in the process, Vicky realizes that this death cult is not for her.

Genuinely enthralling and funny, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is again a bittersweet comedy dealing with a serious topic: the difficulty of combining passion and commitment. It does full justice to both the alluring insanity of the bohemian life and the more sober virtues of the bourgeoisie, before coming down solidly on the side of bourgeois commitment and fidelity. This is surely the most anti-romantic story since Madame Bovary, and that’s a good thing.

Again, this is not a message I expected from Woody Allen. Practically any other contemporary director would tempt young white women to destroy their lives by sugar-coating Cristina and her choices and mocking Vicky as hopelessly square and uptight.

I highly recommend Midnight in Paris and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. They are very imaginative and entertaining comedies with a moral core that, frankly, I didn’t think Woody Allen had in him.