Why Is Midnight In Paris So Special?
Paris is an undefeatable city, It lives; It lasts; It loves. And many love it back. Woody Allen begins his film Midnight in Paris with an ode to the modern Paris. As the scenes of the city dwellers and monuments roll, Allen plays “Si Tu Vois Ma Mère" by Sidney Bechet. The song is a dip into the journey many artists have taken: Bechet, an American Jazz musician who moved to Paris, found success and inspiration in the city during the 1950s. As Professor Stoltzfus points out, “The sax calls the tune, and the clarinets follow in step. But midway through, the order is reversed.” It is the perfect lead to a question that floats through the mind during Midnight in Paris: did the American artists whom Allen features make Paris so special? Or did the
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The generation of writers Room speaks of grew up with a resurgence of the temperance movement as a conservative political belief, especially during their college years. Room explains that writers, often political liberals, would see drinking as an act of political dissent during this time. These male authors also lived through World War I at the prime age for military service, and many had trouble adapting to peacetime. Unable to adjust they fled to France, the country with the highest recorded per capita alcohol consumption. There, The Lost Generation became fascinated by alcohol representing the sacred cause, a part of the cafés where revolutionaries would meet to express their independence from the state and societal norms. Their obsession with alcohol spread to their work, none more notoriously than Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Matt Djob, an english professor that specializes in the relation of literature and addiction, argues that almost every significant character in the novel matches the definition of an alcoholic. They all display, “a remarkable degree of moodiness, impulsivity, hostility, and distrust” and “an intense need for personal power.” Every character in the novel was based on the companions Hemingway travelled with on a vacation to Pamplona. Alcoholism was a bigger problem in the 1920s than Allen deigned to include in his
The generation of writers Room speaks of grew up with a resurgence of the temperance movement as a conservative political belief, especially during their college years. Room explains that writers, often political liberals, would see drinking as an act of political dissent during this time. These male authors also lived through World War I at the prime age for military service, and many had trouble adapting to peacetime. Unable to adjust they fled to France, the country with the highest recorded per capita alcohol consumption. There, The Lost Generation became fascinated by alcohol representing the sacred cause, a part of the cafés where revolutionaries would meet to express their independence from the state and societal norms. Their obsession with alcohol spread to their work, none more notoriously than Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. Matt Djob, an english professor that specializes in the relation of literature and addiction, argues that almost every significant character in the novel matches the definition of an alcoholic. They all display, “a remarkable degree of moodiness, impulsivity, hostility, and distrust” and “an intense need for personal power.” Every character in the novel was based on the companions Hemingway travelled with on a vacation to Pamplona. Alcoholism was a bigger problem in the 1920s than Allen deigned to include in his