Pre London Thoughts

London as a character in cinema going back to films like Christmas Carol and into the present with Wonder Women is often viewed as a cold industrial city. It can be very unforgiving and restrictive. In An Education London serves as the protagonist’s prison. She feels trapped by what she perceives is a lack of culture and openness. In About Time, Tim’s younger sister Kitty can’t make it in London. She continues to lose jobs and falls in with a terrible boyfriend who drives her towards the bottle. Her free spirit can’t thrive in the city where it must be contained, she’s far more herself in the country with her parents. That said, it’s not all negative. London can also be a place of opportunity, as it is for the Boy Who Lived. Harry Potter feels free for the first time when Hagrid takes him through the portal at the Leaky Caldron in London through to Diagon Alley, and he meets his best friend at Kings Cross Station. For Sherlock Holmes, London is a stimulant to exercise his deductive reasoning, and its where he lives with his best friend, one of the only people in the world whose opinion can sway him.

Paris as a character in cinema is viewed as a city of romantics and dreamers. Artists flourish in Paris. You can be anyone you want to be, you can express yourself freely. This Paris is seen in films and shows like Midnight in Paris, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Les Intouchables, Ratatouille, Hugo, and Victor/Victoria. In all of these films the main characters are enabled to live the live the lives they wouldn’t otherwise be able to in other societies, and explore the magic of the city through their journey to find themselves. Amelie in particular because of the nature of the narrative as well as the imaginative protagonist captures the magic of the city. Paris can also have a darker side in cinema, as is shown in films like Moulin Rouge and Les Miserables. Side note, I’ve been listening to El Tango De Roxanne on loop since I rewatched Moulin Rouge and it gives me chills every time. 

This assignment had me watch two Woody Allen films, (Midnight in Paris and Match Point at the behest of my parents). This is a rare occurrence as I don’t tend to like his films. I can’t say Match Point did much to change that, but it got me thinking about the women in his movies. I did a bit of research to listen to other more well informed opinions (I’ve only seen these two and Annie Hall) and I finally found an article that didn’t praise him for being an eternally correct genius and didn’t call him a woman hating narcissist. The article made the claim that everything after his relationship with Mia Farrow ended (Mighty Aphrodite onwards) involved a sort of preformative masculinity and poorly written female characters, whereas his greatest films such as Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters had fully realized, complex female characters. I would tend to agree at least in Midnight in Paris and Match Point. The women in Match Point didn’t have any personality or motivation and functioned only as plot devices and obstacles in the narrative of the main character rather than being their own characters. Midnight in Paris wasn’t quite as damming, and I enjoyed the film in that I thought it was cute. It was the typical romantic comedy and as such some gender stereotypes were at work within Inez (the crazy fiance who is ridiculously terrible and only after him for his money), and Adriana (the manic pixie dream girl who the main character wants to fix, the female equivalent of the “my love will fix him” bad boy). It was saved by the fact that he didn’t stay and “fix” her, but instead fixed himself. That said, she wasn’t exactly a character with a lot of depth to her besides how beautiful she was. Anyhow, he’s not really my taste is I suppose the point, I just wanted to be more informed since he’s considered a great filmmaker.