Critic: Midnight in Paris Lied to You

"[T]he veneration accorded to Paris by Americans is puzzling. Like other grand cities, this one certainly has an aura -- yet its cultural credentials are hardly the world's most impressive. If anything, its most enduring characteristic is a distinct whiff of merde de taureau. It wasn'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's aesthetic soul appears to have more to do with Gitanes, cafe society and elegant posturing." Wait -- symbolism is over? And Roman Polanski lives there? Sacrebleu! [The Guardian]



Comments

  • ywfanoo1 says:

    My mom went to Paris a few years ago and said in all her travels she had never had to step over so many turds on the sidewalk. She went to the Louvre and saw somebody actually taking a dump right out front. You won't see that in a Audrey Hepburn movie.

  • jake says:

    Hahahaha. It's true. Our family has been traveling Europe for years and our joke is that there's no other city on that continent that smells like urine as much as Paris. That city smells awful. Even now, when we end up in some seedy part of some town with piss stains and smell we say to each other, "Hey, it smells like Paris here!" Stateside, we've decided that Paris' sister city is the vomit soaked streets of New Orleans.

  • miles silverberg says:

    But this is true of almost any city that Allen showcases in his latter-day films, including New York. He idealizes any city he falls in love with. The only exception is LA of course, which he hates as much as ever.