Midnight in Paris, ditected by Woody Allen

Midnight in Paris is the hour of dreams. Woody Allen's latest film is the renewed ascending curve of an outstanding career with fewer downs than ups.
Back to the splendour of his earlier films, such as Radio Days or Manhattan, Allen did not put all his bets on a lesser remake of a proved success. Midnight in Paris is an original approach of an unprejudiced director.

A Man is engaged to be married and goes to Paris, with his fiancée. If Paris is the city of love and fascination, it is also the city of truth, the place where one encounters oneself, and becomes out of love with the wrong person. But in this surrealist film, love is merely a scenery for bold, yet tastefully discrete, magic events. Gil is a man who believes the age of gold to be in the past and never in the present or the future. He walks about nostalgia shops, and dreams of the twenties. Lost in an alley and sleepless, alone and bored with his constantly present pseudo-intellectual fiancée’s friend, he is suddenly taken in an old taxi, at the strike of midnight, to the real twenties where he meets his greatest idols: Cole Porter, Jean Cocteau, Buñuel, Man Ray, Picasso, Dali, Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway… and Adriana. Every night he stands in the same alley and every time he enters a parallel universe. He falls in love with his twenties female similar, a woman for whom the golden age was the last decade of the nineteenth century. And here, the story jumps into a farer past, the Paris of Lautrec, Degas, Gauguin, Offenbach.

The stroke of genius of the director is far from the common final revelation that makes one return to real life. No, the only revelation is the fact that Gil overcomes his fixation through Adriana choices and actions. She chooses to stay in the nineteenth century stating that the past is the place to be, whilst he realizes that each person belongs to their own time.

Unlike The Purple Rose of Cairo, where the main character accepts the ugliness of reality after leaving the universe of dreams, Gil sees the beauty of it for the first time, as he crosses a bridge, side by side to his soul mate, a French girl who, like him, loves to walk in the rain.

Let’s do it, let’s fall in love, by Cole Porter is the main musical theme, and does the job marvellously.
A note should be made to a less achieved filming of present Paris. Being himself a lover of the old days, Woody Allen captures the light of Paris past as it is represented in paintings. But he fails to grasp the essence of real Parisian light, or even Spain’s (Vicky, Christina, Barcelona). Though living in Europe, Woody Allen is heartedly American, he shoots New York with brilliancy, but hardly the rest of the world.

Yet, once again, regardless of his passion for the old, Woody Allen answers with the future, when the Present asks a question.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atLg2wQQxvU

Cast and crew

Woody Allen’s long time searched alter-ego, Owen Wilson plays Gil in the main role.
Other roles: Yves Heck as Cole Porter, Adrian Brody as Dali, Corey Stoll as Hemingway, Allison Pill and Tom Hiddleston as Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marcial Di Fonzo Bo as Picasso, Tom Cordier as Man Ray, Adrien de Van as Buñuel, François Rostain as Degas, Marion Cottillard as Adriana, Rachel McAdams as Inez (Gil’s fiancée), Michael Sheen as Paul (Inez pseudo-intellectual friend), Léa Seydoux as Gabrielle (Gil’s true love)…
Director: Woody Allen
Written by Woody Allen

A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS, directed by Fred Zinnemann

A Man For All Seasons, directed by Fred Zinnemann is the story of Sir Thomas More, an English scholar from the sixteenth century, a Man who died for a principle. His death did not change the ways of his world, or even served future justice. No, as Tolstoy said, much later, where there is a court justice is lost. Such was the case of Sir Thomas More.

The Plot:
Henry VIII wishes to divorce Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn a whim that partly contributed to the independence of England from the Catholic Church. For every drastic change, old laws must be destroyed and new laws written. But new laws must be created for valid reasons, not for personal interests. The system is transformed when its ways no longer support justice. Henry VIII wants a new world that holds his whish and not necessarily England’s. Only one Man stands between the king and that change, and that is Sir Thomas More, respected by all, followed by all, the monarch’s conscience. But a king of few principles needs only to eliminate that conscience. Sir Thomas is taken to trial as traitor. He is condemned.

Paul Scofield plays Sir Thomas More with the brilliancy that makes one substitute the real character by the fictional in one’s mind. Leo Genn achieved the same mastery playing Petronius in Mervyn LeRoy’s Qvo-Vadis (1951). Orson Welles played a very credible Cardinal Wolsey. John Hurt became Richard Rich, undistinguished from a true villain. Robert Shaw was wisely discrete playing the grotesque Henry VIII.

Why then, a film that enhances the curse that hits men who are defenders of noble principles, integrity, honesty becomes not dark but a redeemer of Mankind? For the same reason martyrs do: Death adds immortality to that courage, and above all to those principles.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nSx0_9TZww

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-nJR15e0F4

Cast and crew:

1966
Directed by Fred Zinnemann
Based on a play by Robert Bolt A Man For All Seasons
Music by Georges Delerue
Cast: Paul Scofield (Sir Thomas More), Robert Shaw (Henry VIII), Orson Welles (Cardinal Wolsey), John Hurt (Richard Rich), Nigel Davenport (the Duke of Norfolk), Leo McKern (Thomas Cromwell), Wendy Hiller (Sir Thomas’ wife Alice), Susannah York (Sit Thomas’ daughter Margaret)…

THE NAKED JUNGLE, directed by Byron Haskin

There is a man isolated in the South American jungle. He owns a cacao plantation, a land stolen inch by inch to the Rio Negro river. Though being away from civilization since his boyish years, this man hasn’t forgotten its luxuries and refinement. In fact, he is determined to build his own kind of civilization in the middle of the jungle where everything brought there was never touched by any hands but his. A wife is part of that dream. But being unable to leave the plantation, he asks his New Orleaner brother to find one for him, a marriage by proxy. And so, a woman of great charm, refinement, sophistication, arrives to Rio Negro, brought by a boat along with her fashionable luggage. A perfect wife, full of wits, knowledge, bravery, beauty. Too perfect, Leiningen, the plantation owner, begins to think.
Here begins the tension of the story, as Leiningen tries to unwrap, day by day, the hidden fault of his new arrived wife. There is one, in fact, but in his eyes only. A second amount of tension is added to the story. The couple’s drama becomes somehow less important before a real threat. The worst creature God created is coming: :Marabunta – the killer ant that destroys and eats everything that stands in its passage, including people. Trying to save the plantation and their own lives, Leiningen and his wife find love, and truly meet for the first time.
Charton Heston plays Leiningen and Eleonor Parker his wife, a victorious choice by director Byron Haskin.
The music by Daniele Amfitheatrof is masterly combined with the frightening sound of the jungle. A special reference should be made to costume designer Edith Head, a brilliant work that adds the right shade of colour to the scenes, making a match of beauty and horror.
Most of the shooting was made in Florida, a detail that reveals a faultless scenery construction.
The Naked Jungle will strip your soul and overwhelm you again and again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-FUk7q9N8BM

Cast and crew:

Charton Heston (Christopher Leiningen), Eleonor Parker (Joanna Leiningen), William Conrad (Commissioner), Abraham Sofaer (Incacha)…

Directed by Byron Haskin
Produced by George Pal
Music by Daniele Amfitheatrof
Screenplay by Ranald MacDougall