"Midnight in Paris": Goldberger's Gripe

Paul Goldberger, in “What’s Missing from Woody Allen’s Paris” (posted on newyorker.com’s “News Desk” blog, June 24, 2011), says that Allen’s vision of Paris, as presented in Midnight in Paris, is “flat and one-dimensional.” He says Allen’s Paris “isn’t a city, it’s a stage set,” that it’s “all beautiful surface,” and that “There’s no edge to it whatsoever.” Goldberger isn’t the first critic to complain about Allen’s postcard city views. Penelope Gilliatt, in her review of Allen’s Manhattan (“The Black-and-White Apple,” The New Yorker, April 30, 1979; included in Gilliatt’s 1980 collection Three-Quarter Face), wrote:

In the most wry way, to anyone who knows the Manhattan of potholes and poverty and rudeness, the picture is a fable – written by Woody Allen and Marshall Brickman – about a city of smooth rides and riches and thoughtfulness. The picture gives us a view of New York as from a chauffeur-driven car. Harlem is invisible, as though covered by a carpet from Sotheby Parke Benet.

Pauline Kael, in her evisceration of Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters (“Couples,” The New Yorker, February 24, 1986; included in Kael’s 1989 collection Hooked), says:

The willed sterility of his style is terrifying to think about, though; the picture is all tasteful touches. He uses style to blot out the rest of New York City. It’s a form of repression, and from the look of Hannah and Her Sisters, repression is what’s romantic to him. That’s what the press is applauding – the romance of gentrification.

But if you’re writing “a love letter to the city,” which is David Denby’s description of Midnight in Paris (see his excellent review, “The Better Life,” The New Yorker, May 23, 2011), do you include potholes? Do you include high-rises? Do you include “the warts and all,” that Goldberger says makes Paris so much more interesting than “the Paris of Woody Allen’s mind”? Well, you could include these things, I suppose, if they’re part of what you love about the city. That’s what’s great about Paris – it represents a very large number of choices. Not all Allen’s choices are my choices. I prefer peeling walls, elaborate ironwork, impenetrable graffiti – a pungent, textured Paris, in other words. Allen is, as Denby points out, partial to “creamy-walled hotel rooms, restaurants with tall mirrors, gilt molding, and flower-laden tables.” I found Midnight in Paris lacking in the sort of back alley details that I relish. But you know what? Any lacks that Midnight in Paris may have are more than compensated for by the magnificent final scene on the Pont Alexandre III, where Gil unexpectedly meets Gabrielle. What a beautiful bridge! What a beautiful woman! I love that bridge! I love that woman! At that moment, staring up at the screen, I felt the power of Allen’s romanticism concentrating back on me. I left the theatre elated.