The Daily Hatch

Adriana and Gil are seen above walking together in the movie “Midnight in Paris.” Adriana was a fictional character who was Picasso’s mistress in the film. Earlier she had been Modigliani’s mistress and later Georges Braque’s mistress before moving on to Picasso according to the film story line. Actually Picasso had taken girls from others quite often in the past. Picasso’s blue period was during a time when he moved into his best friend’s apartment and took up with his girl after his best friend’s suicide.

I am in the process of going through all the characters from Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris.”  Today I am spending time on Modigliani.

Modigliani, Picasso and André Salmon.jpg

Life and Work 1919 Zborovski arranges for several works by Modigliani to be shown in exhibitions in England. He is shown in Heale at the exhibition Modem French Painting, and in the Hill Gallery in London. English art collectors began to buy his paintings. At the end of May Modigliani returns to Paris. In July he signs a document promising marriage to Jeanne, who is pregnant again. He is shown at the autumn Salon. At the end of the year he becomes very ill with tuberculosis and a planned trip to Italy is cancelled. 1920  On January 24 Modigliani dies in the Charite in Paris. On the following day Jeanne Hebuterne commits suicide. There is a large crowd at their burial at the Pere Lachaise cemetery. The child Jeanne is adopted by Modigliani’s sister in Florence and later writes an important biography of her father. The first retrospective exhibition of Modigliani’s work takes place in the Montaigne Gallery. Leon Indenbaum by Amedeo Modigliani. The Amedeo Modigliani painting on this page is available from A1Reproductions.com as an affordable handmade museum quality oil painting reproduction on canvas.

Amedeo Modigliani

Jeanne Hebuterne

No swearing. No car crashes. No special effects. In an adult movie? “Finally,” sighed one premieregoer after the AFI Associates’ screening of Woody Allen’s Midnight In Paris, a love poem to the City of Light. He’s a born romantic, proof positive being Woody’s alluring visions of New York and London and Barcelona that fill the screens. As he has with his last five movies and their montages of that become beguiling travelogues. Like a five-course dinner at Laperouse, Midnight In Paris is to be savored.

Welcoming the SRO audience at the Samuel Goldwyn Theatre, AFI president and CEO Bob Cassaleannounced that Midnight In Paris, starring Owen Wilson as a lonely night-time wanderer and Rachel McAdams as his feisty fiancee, is Woody’s 50th movie. Archivists beg to differ, that this is his 4lst or 44th. Bob reminded about Woody’s clever jab at Los Angeles – “I could not live in a city where the only cultural advantage is making a right turn on a red light.” Woody’s also said, “Life doesn’t imitate art, it imitates bad television.”

At 75, Woody’s creativity percolates, a rich brew with his poetic original style laced with that famously sly humor and slapdash wit. His Midnight In Paris cast is top-drawer, as he weaves us into a time-travel lovefest of icons from the ’20s, when artists and writers flocked to Paris for inspiration.

Here’s Ernest Hemingway in a standout performance from Corey Stohl, Gertrude Stein played by Kathy Bates, who’s equally wonderful, as are Adrien Brody as Salvador Dali, and Marion Cottilard as a flirtatious French beauty in love with La Belle Epoque.

Here’s Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Picasso, Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Toulouse-Lautrec, Man Ray, and Cole Porter singing and playing the piano with his melodies.

All the while, Woody and his director of photography Darius Khondji capture landmarks such as Montmartre, Place de la Concorde, the flea market, Notre Dame Garden Square, Maxim’s, Laperouse, the Shakespeare & Co. book store. Threaded throughout is the saxophone music of expatriate Sidney Bechet, Woody being a fan of vintage jazz. A dreamscape for Francophiles.

While in pre-production, Woody and wife Soon-Yi Previn breakfasted with French president Nicolas Sarkozy and First Lady Carla Bruni at the Elysee Palace. Woody suggested Carla appear in a cameo, promising she’d work for only two days. Overnight, Carla was written into a scene as a Rodin Museum guide, embarassed by pompous professor Michael Sheen, who hasn’t any clue of what he’s talking about.

Woody still writes on an Olympia portable typewriter that he bought for $40 when he was 16, and keeps a wrinkled brown bag in his closet to store ideas and jokes. Says that he fell in love with Paris in 1964 during the eight months when his screenplay, What’s New Pussycat, was being filmed. “The movie was a mess. I wanted to stay, didn’t have the guts to leave New York, and sometimes wish I had.” (An aside about Paris: Samuel Morse bedded there “to paint,” was quite accomplished, and ended up inventing the telegraph and the code; Paris has a way of ambushing its visitors.)

Very good news: Midnight In Paris raked in $579,000 during its opening weekend with only six theaters. Two in L.A., and four in New York, and opens wider this weekend. Thanks to Sony Pictures Classics presidents Michael Barker and Tom Bernard for their smarts to buy and distribute Midnight In Paris, which rates amongst Woody’s finest.

Next up for Woody is Rome, where he’s filming Bop Cameron with Penelope Cruz, Jesse Eisenberg, Alec Baldwin, Judy Davis, Ellen Page and Roberto Benigni. Is or isn’t this a cast that’s as good as it gets? Any actors out there that would bypass the chance of working with Woody? Doubtful.

Ischia, idyllic Ischia, that summertime haunt of Truman Capote, is an island in the Tyrrhenian Sea, near Capri, and not far from the Gulf of Naples. Our twenty-something friends, India Irving and Mario Rivelli, will be there in July with their charming fifteen-minute movie, Mont Reve, that will open Ischia’s Global Film and Music Festival.

India and Mario created the story of Mont Reve, a name for an imaginary private school in Europe where “the sons and daughters of royals, along with the children of tycoons” are enrolled. India’s the daughter ofLynn von Kersting and Richard Irving, who’ve given us the fabled Ivy restaurants, also Lynn’s stylish Indigo Seas shop, where Ralph Lauren and photographer Bruce Weber shop whenever they’re in town.

An award-winning writer, India met Mario, a champion athlete and the son of Naples’ former mayor, at school. They graduated with honors at USC’s School of Theatre, and co-star in Mont Reve, which India’s written. Lynn von Kersting and Rocky Collins directed, with Lynn producing and serving as music supervisor. Gene Nagata was the director of photography.

Lynn reveals that financing’s now available to begin production for a feature, with European investors pleased that several languages are spoken, which will enhance the global market. Both India and Mario are fluent in Italian, French, Spanish, all in the dialogue of Mont Reve. For years, India summered in Capri, helping with errands at the Grand Hotel Quisisana. She also clerked in Paris at Shakespeare & Co., established on the rue Bucherie in 1919 by heiress Sylvia Beach, who published James Joyce’s Ulysses, which was banned in the U.S.

Mont Reve was filmed in an astounding two days at Lynn and Richard’s estate, the previous residence of the late director George Cukor, which we christened Villa Abondanza in our article in Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. Inspired interiors that Baroness Pauline de Rothschild would have admired, along with the thousand rosebushes, fragrant flowers and vegetable gardens.

Throughout the filming, the Ivy’s favored owner/chef Richard Irving took over as the Craft Services, cooking delicious meals for the ecstatic staff and crew. Would that we could have been there!

Other posts with Woody Allen: