midnight+in+paris

Midnight In Paris

Midnight in Paris is a romantic comedy film written and directed by Woody Allen. This film is about a Hollywood screenwriter, Gil Pender (Owen Wilson), who goes to Paris for a vacation with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams). The theme of this movie was mentioned several times in the movie and it would be concerned with the key words "past", "nostalgia" as well as "romance". The whole movie is about time traveling back to the "golden ages" and it's interesting how the director used lighting, cinematography, and editing in order to portray a sense of nostalgia.



Paris is a city that contains both modern and ancient old feeling that allures many people to visit and comment on it as the one of the most romantic city. For most part of the movie, the lighting is very soft and tries to portray the romance in paris. The tone wouldn't be too serious (dark), because it is a romantic comedy. The funning thing about this film was that it used a lot of frontal lighting, which fully exposes the character and makes the features/characters flat and plain, in the "reality". However, there was more side lighting, which makes the features/characters more dimensional, used when Gil time traveled back to the past. The director might have had many intentions in doing that. One of the reason was that obviously Gil's reality was falling apart as Inez and he fought constantly, and because there weren't good lighting sources the present have more bright frontal lights and the past would have dark side lights. Also, another reason might be because the director wanted to state that there are pasts that are more like reality and the present that are more like non realistic. Before Gil travels to the past, he constantly says that he would like to relive the past and when he relives the past, maybe that was more like the reality to him than the present.



The cinematography was beautiful in this film as the director tried to portray the beauty of Paris. At the beginning of the film, there are wide shots of famous places in Paris and it was absolutely beautiful and eye catching. The montage was a stylistic approach that tried to establish the setting of the film. There weren't many close up contrast to the medium shots and wide shots in this film. The director did that probably in order to put into more consideration of the background of the film (Paris). The only close ups were when Gil was with Adriana (Marion Cotillard) when they were having an affair. The filming technique was mostly focused on trying to establish a romantic mood and a tone rather than to emphasize the plot. The movie was filmed in a very stylistic way with gorgeous cinematography. However, I would like to say even though the cinematography emphasized "Paris", the movie was more "American" than french, because of the plot line. I believe that Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald wouldn't have been depicted by the french people as writers that represent Paris. It would have been a better movie if the director put more effort into the plot line as he did with his filming techniques.





Lastly, the editing in the film was barely noticeable. In order to emphasize the romantic, nostalgic atmosphere, even though Gil travels to the past there is no CG or sci-fi editing aspect to it. Also, it seems like the editor had coated a sepia(ish) color over the film and made the film look more romantic and beautiful in the sense that it felt warm. Because nostalgia plays a big part in this film, making it feel warm and belonging was probably a big editing aspect the editor had to consider. As I had stated above, in order to stylistically show the romantic city of Paris, the editor used montages at the start of the movie. <range type="comment" id="385945362_9">There was a lot of eye line match between characters in order to show the communication that were going on between the characters and especially Gil and the other women he "interacted" with.</range id="385945362_9">