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Midnight in Paris - Love
Spoiler alert: this breakdown contains crucial information about the plot of the
film.
With Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen has returned to writing from strength. The
film is founded on one of the great cinematic story techniques, the utopian world.
Here the moment is 1920s’ Paris, where some of the best writers and artists of
the 20th century lived in close quarters. The film is also based on the concept of
The Golden Age. Every society has some version of the belief that an earlier time
was not only better than the present, but nearly perfect.
This idea of a golden age isn’t just intellectually appealing. It has personal impact
on the audience as well. An older audience especially understands the feeling
that there was a time in their life that was best, but it’s long over now. For many,
the desire to get back to that age is intense. Some experience it every Christmas
when they remember how magical that morning was for them when they were
young. But no more.
Let’s put ourselves in Woody Allen’s position to see how he might have solved
this story problem. He might ask: how do you structure this utopia so that it gains
the added impact of a story?
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Midnight in Paris looks like a fairy tale romantic comedy. But Allen isn’t very good
at the love story form. Yes, he wrote one of the great romantic comedies in Annie
Hall. But when you look at that film in light of all the films he has made since, you
realize that Annie Hall was a one-time home run based primarily on his creation
of the amazing title character, Annie.
The love interest in Midnight in Paris has nowhere near the character definition or
quirky uniqueness of Annie Hall. She is simply a gentle, beautiful Frenchwoman
who wants to live in an earlier time, just like the hero. As a result, there is little
chance for the romance of these characters to build in a way that is satisfying to
the audience.
The love story structure is really just an excuse for Allen to provide a storyline
on which to hang the real gold of the idea, the fantasy comedy elements. With
the woman as a desire line, the hero can take a number of trips into the utopian
moment. And there he can meet a succession of famous artists the audience
knows.
In the Story Structure Class, I talk about the crucial technique of digging out the
gold in your premise – finding what is original to you – and then presenting that
gold again and again to the audience over the course of the story. The gold here
is Allen’s comical take on each of the famous writers and artists of the time. Once
he was clear about that, the question for Allen, the writer, then became: how
do I create a storyline that can allow me to play as many of these comic bits as
possible without the story becoming episodic and collapsing?
The solution Allen chose is the same one used in Crocodile Dundee. In that film
the romantic line between Dundee and the reporter allowed for the maximum
number of encounters between animal man Dundee and the denizens of New
York. Here the hero’s encounter with Hemingway is the equivalent of Dundee
saying to the mugger, “That’s not a knife. This is a knife.”
This structure also allowed Allen to write to his strength, rather than what he has
been doing for the last twenty years, which is writing from his weakness. Allen
has never been very good at the craft of story. In spite of the complexity of some
of his story structures over the years (Annie Hall, Hannah and Her Sisters), Allen
has usually been unable to create a complex plot where the opposing characters
play out their differences through building conflict.
The normal Woody Allen movie consists of a story gag that should take about
thirty minutes to play out. He stretches it to ninety minutes and finally has the
lead character directly explain his self-revelation, which is exactly what Allen
wants his audience to learn from the film.
What Woody Allen is great at is writing comic bits and gags. And he is probably
the second greatest American writer of intellectual comedy, behind Mark Twain.
Unfortunately, Allen is not satisfied with that gift as a writer, and indeed he has
looked down on it since at least the early 70s.
In this film Allen has found a story structure that allows him to feel he is a writer’s
writer, but also gives him permission to enjoy his guilty pleasure of writing brilliant
intellectual comedy. The first time the hero meets Hemingway we hear drop
dead perfect Hemingway prose coming out of his mouth. The scene is hilarious,
especially if you know your American literature.
And that’s another pleasure of the film. Allen’s relatively small audience is
composed of the educated and the sophisticated. So when they get the literary
and visual jokes, they also get to feel how smart they are.
The story is really just an intellectual candy store, with the love story bringing us
back to the store again and again. Of course while we are enjoying the pleasures
of a utopian moment in this film, we also learn, in a great visual gag, the opposite
lesson that you can’t live in the past.
I don’t know if this film signals a possible return to good Woody Allen, as some
have suggested. I do know it provides a clear lesson to the screenwriter in how to
find the right structure and genre embedded in your story idea.
Comments
ed
29 Feb 2012, 02:58
As a France based filmmaker, I'm supposed to be genetically wired to like
Woody Allen..When "Hollywood Ending" conveys a quiet ambiguous message such
as a failed film will always find its audience in France..you might have
some reason to think it twice before giving away to the consensual worship
that France pays to Allen...for some subconscious reason I always have been
reluctant...Thank you John for going straight to the point and being clear
without simplisme: "Allen has never been very good at the craft of
story"..
This seems so obvious to me now !
Tom
28 Feb 2012, 12:51
For me, the most succesful Woody Allen films are Annie Hall, Manhattan,
Stardust Memories, and Hannah and Her Sisters. Annie Hall and Manhattan
were co-written by Marshall Brickman, and to that collaboration I credit
their greatness. Stardust Memoires is the most complex visually of all of
Allen's films, but one could argue that the structure was taken from
Fellini's 8 1/2. And as for Hannah and Her Sisters, it's a thinly
disguised remake of Anna Karenina. I always have problems when Allen uses
other works as something more than just inspiration, but if he doesn't do
this he seems lost when it comes to narrative. But maybe I'm wrong here.
Is it still theft when the audience has no clue where the story comes from?
After all, Shakespeare took most of Hamlet from Saxo Grammaticus, albeit
the plot is not what makes Shakespeare's play great.
Claire J.Lehr
25 Jan 2012, 14:22
I wanted to love this film so much but alas, something was not there for
me.
Kind of like the Chaplain film but the opposite--here the relationship is
missing
& there in Chaplain the structure is
inadequate while Downing Jr.'s brilliance was wasted.
Woody"s jazz helps him get away without
a good story--it is the music that seduces
us with unfulfilled promise.
Yes: he has a gimmick!
Dean
27 Jul 2011, 07:56
The editor of Annie Hall, Ralph Rosenblum in his book When The Shooting
Stops… The Cutting Begins, gives a reason for John's observation about that
film. Allen shot enough story and gags with the intension to make his
character the central focus of the film, which starts out that way.
Rosenblum suggested to Allen that he cut most everything away except the
relationship with Annie making her the focus of the film.
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