Midnight in Paris A Character Analysis

Samuel Traylor July 2, 2011

Samuel Traylor Midnight in Paris, Page 1 Midnight in Paris

Midnight in Paris, this is a romantic comedy set in Paris about a family that goes there because of business, and two young people who are engaged to be married in the fall have experiences there that change their lives. It's about a young man's great love for a city, Paris, and the illusion people have that a life different from theirs would be much better. It stars Owen Wilson, Rachel McAdams, Marion Cotillard, Kathy Bates, and Carla Bruni among others. Sony Press Release.

Samuel Traylor Midnight in Paris, Page 2 Cast

Owen Wilson Rachel McAdams Kurt Fuller & Mimi Kennedy as Gil Pender as Inez as Inez’s parents John & Helen

Michael Sheen & Nina Arianda Alison Pill & Tom Hiddleston Corey Stoll as Paul & Carol Bates as Zelda & F. Scott Fitzgerald as Ernest Hemingway

Carla Bruni Marion Cotillard Adrien Brody as Museum Guide as Adriana as Salvador Dali

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Kathy Bates Sonia Rolland Daniel Lundh as Gertrude Stein as Josephine Baker as Juan Belmonte

Marcial Di Fonzo Bo Emmanuelle Uzan Léa Seydoux as Pablo Picasso as Djuna Barnes as Gabrielle

Yves Heck David Lowe Adrein de Van as Cole Porter as T.S. Eliot as Luis Buñuel

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Tom Cordier Yves-Antione Spoto as Laurent Claret as Man Ray Henri Matisse as Leo Stein

Vincent Menjou Cortes Olivier Rabourdin François Rostain as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec as Paul Guaguin as Edgar Degas

Samuel Traylor Midnight in Paris, Page 5 The Characters

Josephine Baker 1906-1975 Djuna Barnes 1892-1982 American dancer, singer, and actress who found fame American writer who played an important part in the in her adopted homeland of France. The first African development of 20th century English language American to star in a major motion picture, to integrate modernist writing and was a key figure in 1920s and an American concert hall, and to become a world- 30s bohemian Paris. Nightwood with an introduction famous entertainer. Awarded the Croix de guerre for by T.S. Eliot became a cult work of modern fiction. assisting the French Resistance in WWII. The Book of Repulsive Women. The Antiphon.

Luis Buñuel 1900-1983 Un chien andalou 1929 Spanish filmmaker and surrealist who worked in Spain, A 1929 silent surrealist short film by Luis Buñuel and Mexico, France and the US. In 1917 at the University Salvador Dali. It was Buñuel’s first film. It has no plot of Madrid he became a close friend of Salvador Dali. and the chronology is disjointed. It uses dream logic in Films include Un chien andalou (an eye openr), Belle narrative flow that can be described in terms of then- de jour, and Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie (Best popular Freudian free association, presenting a series Foreign Film 1972). of tenuously related scenes.

Samuel Traylor Midnight in Paris, Page 6 The Characters

Salvador Dali 1904-1989 The Persistence of Memory A prominent Spanish Catalan Surrealist painter. His The painting introduces the surrealistic image of soft, best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was melting pocket watches. The soft watches are a completed in 1931. His expansive artistic repertoire rejection of the assumption that time is rigid or includes film, sculpture, and photography, in deterministic. This idea is supported by other images collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of in the work, such as the wide expanding landscape, and media. the other limp watches being devoured by ants.

Edgar Degas 1834-1917 The Rehearsal c. 1873-78 French artist famous for his work in painting, The Rehearsal. sculpture, printmaking and drawing. Regarded as one of the founders of Impressionism he preferred to be called a realist. Over half his works depicts dancers - a master in the depiction of movement. His portraits are notable for their psychological complexity and depiction of human isolation. Samuel Traylor Midnight in Paris, Page 7 The Characters

T.S. Eliot 1888-1965 Prufrock 1915 St. Louis born playwright, and literary critic, and In the room the women come and go arguably the most important English-language poet of talking of Michelangelo... the 20th century. Naturalized as a British subject in I have measured out my life with coffee spoons 1927. Best known for The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, The Hollow Men and Four Gil to Eliot: “Where I come from, people measure out Quartets. Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature in 1948. their lives in coke spoons.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald 1896-1940 Zelda Fitzgerald 1900-1948 American author of novels and short stories, whose American novelist and wife of F. Scott Fitzgerald. An works are paradigm writing of the Jazz Age, a term he icon of the 1920s - dubbed by her husband as “the first coined himself. Wrote This Side of Paradise, The American Flapper”. They were seen as embodiments Beautiful and Damned, Tender is the Night, The Great of the Jazz Age and Roaring Twenties. Moving to Gatsby, and The Love of the Last Tycoon. An Paris they were recast as the Lost Generation. She alcoholic he spent his last years as a Hollywood hack. wrote magazine articles, short stories and Save Me the Last Waltz. She died in a hospital fire. Samuel Traylor Midnight in Paris, Page 8 The Characters

Juan Belmonte 1892-1962 Ernest Hemingway 1899-1961 Spanish bullfighter, considered by many to have been Oak Park born author and journalist. His writing style the greatest matador of all time. A friend of characterized by economy and understatement Hemingway he appears in Death in the Afternoon and influenced 20th century fiction. A member of the Lost The Sun Also Rises. Due to deformities his technique Generation his body of work earned him the Nobel was to stand erect and motionless. After engaging one Prize in 1954. For Whom the Bells Toll, The Old Man more time in his final passions he shot himself. and the Sea, and A Moveable Feast. He shot himself.

Paul Gauguin 1848-1903 Where Do We Come From? Leading French Post-Impressionist and Primitivism What Are We? artist. Important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, print-maker, ceramist, and writer. Where Are We Going? Cloisonnism and Synthetism. Spent later life in Tahiti and Marquesas Islands.

Samuel Traylor Midnight in Paris, Page 9 The Characters

Henri Matisse 1869-1954 Woman with a Hat French draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter. Fauvism, modernism, and Impressionism.

Pablo Picasso 1881-1973 Cole Porter 1891-1964 Spanish painter, draughtsman, and sculptor who lived Indiana born composer and songwriter. One of the most of his life in France. Co-founded the Cubist major songwriters for the Broadway musical stage. movement. Among his most famous works are Les Wrote lyrics and songs. Noted for his sophisticated, Demoiselles d’Avignon, Guernica, and the Chicago suggestive lyrics, clever rhymes and complex forms. Picasoo. Anything Goes. Night and Day. I Get a Kick Out of You, I’ve Got You Under My Skin.

Samuel Traylor Midnight in Paris, Page 10 The Characters

Man Ray 1890-1976 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Born Emmanuel Radnitzky. American artist who spent 1864-1901. French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, most of his career in Paris. A modernist and significant and illustrator. One of the greatest painters of the Post- contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements. Impressionist period. Recorded in his works many Best known for his avant-garde photography. A painter details of the late-19th-century bohemian lifestyle in and fashion and portrait photographer. Paris. Short. Died from alcoholism and syphilis.

Gertrude Stein 1874-1946 Leo Stein 1872-1947 American writer, poet, and art collector who spent most American art collector and critic. Older brother of of her life in France. Her salon at 27 Rue de Fleurus Gertrude Stein. attracted many of the great writers of the time. Credited with inventing the term “Lost Generation”. Author of one of the earliest coming out stories Q.E.D. Her lifelong romantic partner was Alice B. Toklas.

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