Review: Probably my favorite Woody Allen movie now. It just sweeps you up so you share in Gil's enchantment with the city of Paris as he travels back and forth in time between the present and the 1920s. Gil is a successful Hollywood screenwriter visiting the city with his fiancee while struggling with a decision to abandon his profession and stay in Paris to finish his novel.
Quotes:
"Can you picture how drop dead gorgeous this city is in the rain? Imagine this town in the '20s. Paris in the '20s, in the rain. The artists and writers!"
"Why does every city have to be in the rain? What's wonderful about getting wet?"
"He's a pseudo-intellectual. Just a little bit."
"Ah, Gil, I hardly think he'd be lecturing at the Sorbonne if he's a pseudo-intellectual."
"Ah, now here's a superb Picasso. If I'm not mistaken, he painted this marvelous portrait of his French mistress, Medeline Brissou, in the 20's."
"Oh, Paul, I'm going to have to differ with you on this one."
"Really?"
"Gil, Gil, just pay attention. You might learn something."
"Okay, well, if I'm not mistaken, this was a failed attempt to capture a young French girl named Adriana, from Bordeaux, if my art history serves me, who came to Paris to study costume design for the theater. And I'm pretty sure she had an affair with Modigliani, then Braque, which is how Pablo met her. Picasso. Of course, what you don't get from this portrait is the subtlety in her beauty. She was just a knockout."
"What have you been smoking?"
"I'd hardly call this picture marvelous. It's more of a petit bourgeois statement on how Pablo sees her... saw her. He's distracted by the fact that she was an absolute volcano in the sack."
"I would like you to read my novel and get your opinion."
"I hate it."
"You haven't even read it yet."
"If it's bad, I'll hate it. If it's good, then I'll be envious and hate it even more. You don't want the opinion of another writer."
"500 francs for a Matisse? Yeah I think that sounds fair! You know, I wonder if actually I can pick up 6 or 7?"
"You'll never write well if you fear dying. Do you?"
"Yeah, I do. I'd say probably, might be my greatest fear actually."
"It's something all men before you have done, all men will do."
"I know, I know."
"Have you ever made love to a truly great woman?"
"Actually, my fiancée is pretty sexy."
"And when you make love to her, do you feel true and beautiful passion? And do you for at least that moment, lose your fear of death?"
"No, that doesn't happen."
"Hemingway did have one plot suggestion. He doesn't quite believe that the protagonist doesn't see that his fiancée is having an affair right before his eyes."
"These people don't have any antibiotics!"
"What are you talking about?"
"Adriana, if you stay here though, and this becomes your present then pretty soon you'll start imagining another time was really your... You know, was really the golden time. Yeah, that's what the present is. It's a little unsatisfying because life's a little unsatisfying."
"That's the problem with writers. You are so full of words."
5 out of 5 stars
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