&lt;div class=&quot;track&quot;&gt;&lt;img alt=&quot;&quot; src=&quot;http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.22.2/17850?ns=guardian&amp;pageName=Schlock+and+awe%3A+Woody+Allen+routs+the+US+with+Midnight+in+Paris%3AArticle%3A1645350&amp;ch=Film&amp;c3=GU.co.uk&amp;c4=Woody+Allen+%28Film%29%2COwen+Wilson+%28Film%29%2CDrama+%28Film+genre%29%2CRomance+%28Film+genre%29%2CFilm%2CF+Scott+Fitzgerald+%28Author%29%2CErnest+Hemingway%2CBooks%2CCulture%2CParis+%28Travel%29%2CTravel&amp;c5=France+Travel%2CNot+commercially+useful%2CFilm+Reviews&amp;c6=David+Cox&amp;c7=11-Oct-10&amp;c8=1645350&amp;c9=Article&amp;c10=Blogpost&amp;c11=Film&amp;c13=Between+the+lines+%28film+series%29&amp;c25=Film+blog&amp;c30=content&amp;h2=GU%2FFilm%2Fblog%2FFilm+blog&quot; width=&quot;1&quot; height=&quot;1&quot; /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p class=&quot;standfirst&quot;&gt;Only the city of light could dazzle American audiences into worshipping Allen&#039;s latest film. Do I smell &lt;em&gt;merde de taureau&lt;/em&gt;?&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So Woody Allen has at last &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/sep/30/woody-allen-midnight-in-paris&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;restored his fortunes&lt;/a&gt; in the America that so cruelly forgot him. Yet it&#039;s not a fresh helping of his trademark insights into the inner life of his homeland that have brought this about: instead he has taken a short cut to his countrymen&#039;s hearts by treating them to a bucketload of schlock.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This bucket is labelled &quot;nostalgia&quot;, but &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/movie/141834/midnight-in-paris&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Midnight in Paris&lt;/a&gt; depends for its effect on transporting the wishful to a mystical place that might still exist, rather than to a &lt;em&gt;temps perdu&lt;/em&gt; that&#039;s doomed to be unreachable. Allen has been looking to glossy travel pages for his films&#039; go-faster stripes for most of the past decade. London didn&#039;t do the business; a side trip to Barcelona was a touch too &lt;em&gt;exc&egrave;ntric&lt;/em&gt; (Catalan for &quot;recherche&quot;). Only now has he hit on the blindingly obvious: for Americans, there&#039;s just one setting that can validate almost any artistic affectation. The city of light.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Since their earliest days, Americans have believed Paris to be the repository of a kind of cultural magic that eluded their bold but brash republic. Hence the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2006/americans-in-paris&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;remarkable tide of artists who&#039;ve crossed the pond&lt;/a&gt; in search of it: Fitzgerald, James, Hemingway, Irving, Mailer, Miller, Nin, Pound, Stein, &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Abbott_McNeill_Whistler#Art_study_in_France&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Whistler&lt;/a&gt;, Eakins, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tate.org.uk/research/tateresearch/tatepapers/06autumn/fraserjenkins.htm&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Hopper&lt;/a&gt;, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Buchwald, Twain &hellip; come to mind.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Gil, the time-travelling would-be novelist hero of Midnight in Paris, gets to meet a few of the above, but can really only scratch the surface. He is, of course, just the latest in a long line of fictional Americans seduced by the city&#039;s transatlantic charms. (Perhaps the first of these to hit the big screen was Charles Ray&#039;s Jerry back in 1926, in the Edmund Goulding silent film, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/413822/Paris/&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;Paris&lt;/a&gt;. The most memorable is Gene Kelly&#039;s more familiar Jerry, in &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlvzGT1Ta2w&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;An American in Paris&lt;/a&gt;, which is shortly to be &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bfi.org.uk/whatson/bfi_southbank/film_programme/extended_runs/an_american_in_paris&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;re-released in all its digitally restored glory&lt;/a&gt; for its 60th anniversary.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Yet the veneration accorded to Paris by Americans is puzzling. Like other grand cities, this one certainly has an aura &ndash; yet its cultural credentials are hardly the world&#039;s most impressive. If anything, its most enduring characteristic is a distinct whiff of &lt;em&gt;merde de taureau&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It wasn&#039;t Paris that delivered Bach, Beethoven, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Leonardo, Marx, Michelangelo or the Beatles. Instead, the city has given us the likes of bohemianism, deconstructionism, symbolism and the nouvelle vague. All of these were quite fun at the time, but in retrospect seem somewhat less than the real deal. The city&#039;s aesthetic soul appears to have more to do with Gitanes, cafe society and elegant posturing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;From 3,000 miles away, this may be less obvious, but even Americans know deep down that it&#039;s true. Is Midnight in Paris therefore a satire on the US&#039;s thraldom to Pseudsville-on-Seine? Gil is gently mocked for doting on his surroundings; his fiancee&#039;s know-all friend Paul is derided for his obsession with Parisian lore. Nonetheless, this is one of those parodies that becomes a prime example of what it pretends to parody.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Naturally, France is happy to indulge this infatuation with its capital. But while French cinema is a source of pride, artistic appreciation goes both ways: some American film-makers &ndash; like some American writers &ndash; are bigger in Paris than they are in LA. David Lynch, Samuel Fuller, John Cassavetes &ndash; and Woody Allen, to name but a few.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The English, too, have a penchant for Paris (with Ken Loach standing in for Allen). Yet the Anglo-Saxon version seems somehow more knowing and reticent &ndash; even a little patronising. Something of the difference can be picked up in the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/oct/06/midnight-in-paris-film-review&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;cautiously positive British reviews of Midnight in Paris&lt;/a&gt;, compared with their &lt;a href=&quot;http://articles.latimes.com/2011/may/20/entertainment/la-et-midnight-paris-20110520&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;fulsome American equivalents&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Allen&#039;s devotion to the city seems to be total. &quot;If I didn&#039;t live in New York, Paris is the place I would live,&quot; &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sonyclassics.com/midnightinparis/production.html&quot; title=&quot;&quot;&gt;he says&lt;/a&gt;. How pleased the hoteliers of his second home must be at the forthcoming wave of tourism, at the director&#039;s fuelling of a Parisian delusion they clearly value. Allen has waited a long time to recover his standing in his native land. It&#039;s a bit sad that this is how he did it.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;related&quot; style=&quot;float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;&quot;&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/woodyallen&quot;&gt;Woody Allen&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/owenwilson&quot;&gt;Owen Wilson&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/drama&quot;&gt;Drama&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/romance&quot;&gt;Romance&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/fscottfitzgerald&quot;&gt;F Scott Fitzgerald&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/ernesthemingway&quot;&gt;Ernest Hemingway&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/paris&quot;&gt;Paris&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/li&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;author&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/davidcox&quot;&gt;David Cox&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;br/&gt;&lt;div class=&quot;terms&quot;&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.guardian.co.uk&quot;&gt;guardian.co.uk&lt;/a&gt; &amp;copy; 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. 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