Writing
Allen employed a reverse approach in writing the screenplay for this film, by building the film's plot around a conceived movie title, 'Midnight in Paris'.[13] The time-travel portions of Allen's storyline are evocative of the Paris of the 1920s described in Ernest Hemingway's 1964 posthumously published memoir A Moveable Feast, with Allen's characters interacting with the likes of Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, and using the phrase "a moveable feast" in two instances, with a copy of the book appearing in one scene. Allen originally wrote the character Gil as an East Coast intellectual, but he rethought it when he and casting director Juliet Taylor began considering Owen Wilson for the role.[6] "I thought Owen would be charming and funny but my fear was that he was not so Eastern at all in his persona," says Allen, who realised that making Gil a Californian would actually make the character richer, so he rewrote the part and submitted it to Wilson, who readily agreed to do it. Allen describes him as "a natural actor".[6] The set-up has certain plot points in common with the 1990s British sitcom Goodnight Sweetheart.
Filming
Principal photography began in Paris in July 2010.[14] Allen states that the fundamental aesthetic for the camera work was to give the film a warm ambience. He describes that he likes it (the cinematography), "intensely red, intensely warm, because if you go to a restaurant and you're there with your wife or your girlfriend, and it's got red-flecked wallpaper and turn-of-the-century lights, you both look beautiful. Whereas if you're in a seafood restaurant and the lights are up, everybody looks terrible. So it looks nice. It's very flattering and very lovely."[13] To achieve this he and his cinematographer, Darius Khondji, used primarily warm colours in the film's photography, filmed in flatter weather and employed limited camera movements, in attempts to draw little attention to the cinematography. This is the first Woody Allen film to go through a digital intermediate, instead of being color timed in the traditional photochemical way. According to Allen, its use here is a test to see if he likes it enough to use on his future films.[15]
Allen's directorial style placed more emphasis on the romantic and realistic elements of the film than the fantasy elements. He states that he "was interested only in this romantic tale, and anything that contributed to it that was fairytale was right for me. I didn't want to get into it. I only wanted to get into what bore down on his (Owen Wilson's) relationship with Marion."[13]
Locations
The film opens with a 3+1⁄2-minute postcard-view montage of Paris, showing some of the iconic tourist sites.[16] Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times describes the montage as a stylistic approach that lasts longer than necessary to simply establish location. According to Turan, "Allen is saying: Pay attention – this is a special place, a place where magic can happen."[17] Midnight in Paris is the first Woody Allen film shot entirely on location in Paris, though both Love and Death (1975) and Everyone Says I Love You (1996) were partially filmed there. Filming locations include Giverny, John XXIII Square (near Notre Dame), Montmartre, Deyrolle, the Palace of Versailles, the Opéra, Pont Alexandre III, the Sacré-Cœur, the Île de la Cité itself, and streets near the Panthéon.[9]
