THE YELLOW CAR
Just saw MIDNIGHT IN PARIS for the third time and couldn’t help marveling at the ingenuity of Woody Allen in keeping things simple while bringing us face-to-face with that whole magilla of authors and artist expatriates from the 1920s.
It’s midnight in the Paris of today. An aspiring author played by Owen Wilson sees a mysterious yellow car approaching from out of the mist. Filled with rowdies looking for a good time, the car stops in front of him. He decides to get in. It takes him to a Parisian bar and he goes inside.
WHAMMO—suddenly Wilson is drinking and rubbing elbows with Hemingway and Fitzgerald, Zelda, Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein, and cozying up to the mistress of Picasso. Later he meets Salvadore Dali, Bunuel, Man Ray, T.S. Elliot.
While we struggle with magical devices like time machines and space ships and complicated portals and flashbacks and flash forwards, Woody Allen chose the everyday simplicity of a car to move us backward almost a century in time. Sure it was exotic—that strikingly yellow 1925 Peugeot Type 176 sedan.
But that yellow car got us to where Woody Allen wanted us to go. No long, perilous journey through space. No feeling we didn’t belong. Just as natural as stepping into a hybrid for a trip to the office or the Mall. Absolutely brilliant.
"Kate Conway Has It All. I'd Hate Her Except I Wanna Be Her." ”
—Quote from Amazon reader Susan Scarafia
About William
Before becoming a novelist, William Thompson (Tom) Ong worked for advertising agencies in New York and his own agency in Philadelphia. He is a graduate of DePauw University and holds a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University. Tom lives...
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William ’s Favorite Books
A Farewell to Arms, Saturday, Couples, The Razor's Edge, World According to Garp, Mrs. Dalloway, Get Shorty, The Great Gatsby, The English Patient, Mr. Palomar...
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Yellow Car
Yellow submarine took the Beatles to interesting places, too. Although people had recommended Midnight in Paris to me when it came out, I had no idea it featured a yellow car. Sounds interesting.
I was laughing so hard at the
I was laughing so hard at the Hemingway character I could barely breathe at times.
THE YELLOW CAR
That's another thing Woody Allen did so well. He poked beautiful fun at the huge characters so many of us grew up on and venerated as beginning authors. Hemingway was a riot.