MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is one of Woody Allen’s best movies, definitely the best since the mid-90’s (Mighty Aphrodite, Bullets Over Broadway), and while later entries like Vicky Christina Barcelona and Blue Jasmine are strong, this 2011 fantasy-comedy-romance-brainy period piece wins the charm prize. It also got the awards-shrugging auteur an Oscar for his screenplay, and nominations for Best Picture, Director and Art Direction. Done for $17,000,000, the $56,800,000 it made in North America ranked 59th, the global gross bringing that to $151,700,000, the most ever for an Allen fable. *

“You always take the side of the help. That’s why Daddy says you’re a communist.”

‘Gil Pender’ (Owen Wilson) and his fiancée ‘Inez’ (Rachel McAdams) vacation in Paris with her parents. The trip shows up the schism in their relationship, his essential idealism vs. her see-thru materialism. And her snooty folks think he’s a clown. The divide becomes an existential chasm when Gil, alone late at night on a stroll, finds himself literally transported back to the Paris of the 1920’s, and aspiring novelist Gil lands in the company of literary greats, carousing and expousing. Further solo ambles into the time warp have him engaging with famous artists. Inez thinks he’s gone off the deep end, but it takes getting ‘lost’ for Gil to find himself. It helps him to have his inspiration guides come to life, to his life: Hemingway, the Fitzgeralds, Luis Buñuel, Degas, Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cole Porter…

Transcendence and revelation are on the menu via peeks into the past as a path to the future. Sly humor, magnetic music, giddy romance and captivating scenery hit just-right notes in every arrondissement of the screenplay, one of Allen’s warmest and most beautifully realized; a valentine to the city and art, to change and hope. With jokes.

A few of Allen’s latter-career productions that he doesn’t appear in have someone serve as a stand-in; with his cheerful blend of casual and aware, Wilson’s far and away the best: honest and unforced, the enthusiasm infectious, his way with zingers droll, dawning realization touching. Always fetching, here McAdams keenly makes the switch from cute to churlish.

MAN RAY: “A man in love with a woman from a different era. I see a photograph!”   BUÑUEL: “I see a film!”  ÍGIL: “I see an insurmountable problem!”   DALÍ: “I see a rhinoceros!”

The spirits-evoking triptych commences with a 3½ minute montage of Parisian locales and landmarks; throughout the telling, lovers of the city (and lovers in general) win a mini-vacation to Giverny, Montmartre,Versailles, the Opéra, the Sacré-Cœur, and a buffet of coins et recoins/nooks & crannies. A brimming jazz and classical soundtrack accompanies the lyrical glide-thru places and into periods, fresh life breathed into them by Darius Khondj’s ambient cinematography.

The supporting cast is terrific, with special nods to Marion Cotillard as ‘Adriana’, mistress to Pablo Picasso and a ready muse to soulful Gil; Alison Pill as Zelda Fitzgerald, carefree to the breaking point; Michael Sheen as ‘Paul, a blowhard lecturer friend of Inez; Léa Seydoux as ‘Gabrielle’, an antique dealer Gil meets when he ‘returns’ to modern-day Paris; Adrien Brody, instantly winning as merrily bonkers Salvador Dalí; and the most fun, Corey Stoll as a ready-for-anything (“that is true”) Ernest Hemingway, deadpan-to-perfection, having a grand time with Allen’s affectionate teasing of the author’s he-manly, I-dare-you-to-disagree philoso-speak.

“I believe that love that is true and real, creates a respite from death. All cowardice comes from not loving or not loving well, which is the same thing. And then the man who is brave and true looks death squarely in the face, like some rhino-hunters I know or Belmonte, who is truly brave… It is because they make love with sufficient passion, to push death out of their minds… until it returns, as it does, to all men… and then you must make really good love again.”

Short of visualizing it thru a great book, imagining it in a cool dream or flying there, knocking back some Absinthe and hoping that sleekly attired woman, alone at the next cafe table, reading “Tender is The Night” will look in your direction—this is as close as you can get.

“You know, I sometimes think, how is anyone ever gonna come up with a book, or a painting, or a symphony, or a sculpture that can compete with a great city. You can’t. Because you look around and every street, every boulevard, is its own special art form and when you think that in the cold, violent, meaningless universe that Paris exists, these lights, I mean come on, there’s nothing happening on Jupiter or Neptune, but from way out in space you can see these lights, the cafés, people drinking and singing. For all we know, Paris is the hottest spot in the universe.”

Just right at 94 minutes, with Kurt Fuller, Kathy Bates (as Gertrude Stein), Mimi Kennedy, Tom Hiddleston (as F. Scott Fitzgerald), Carla Bruni, Nina Arianda, Yves Heck (as Cole Porter), Marcial Di Fonzo Bo (as Picasso), Gad Elmaleh, Olivier Rabourdin (as Paul Gauguin), Sonia Rolland (as Josephine Baker).

* Inflation adjusted, Midnight In Paris is Woody Allen’s 11th most successful movie: strike What’s New Pussycat (#1), Antz (3) and Casino Royale (4) as not being real Allen pix, and thus bring this up to 8th. Quality to the side, only a few of his pictures have been big box office hits: Annie Hall was #11 in 1977, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex was 13th in 1972, Sleeper 15th in ’73. Some of the best (Love And Death, Play It Again Sam, Radio Days), while delighting fans and critics, did just moderate business. For a change, treating audiences like they had brains worked in 2011: the smart humor choices included Bridesmaids, The Descendants, Crazy Stupid Love, The Artist, The Guard, The Rum Diary, Jeff Who Lives At Home, Horrible Bosses, and Cedar Rapids.

Allen: “Owen is a natural actor. He doesn’t sound like he’s acting, he sounds like a human being speaking in a situation, and that’s very appealing to me. He’s got a wonderful funny bone, a wonderful comic instinct that’s quite unlike my own, but wonderful of its kind. He’s a blond Texan kind of Everyman’s hero, the kind of hero of the regiment in the old war pictures, with a great flair for being amusing. It’s a rare combination and I thought he’d be great.”