It’s OK to be nostalgic about Woody Allen’s ‘Midnight in Paris’

Published August 2, 2026 6:15am ET



Nostalgia, the old joke goes, ain’t what it used to be. I thought of the line while revisiting Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, released 15 years ago to a nationwide theatrical run throughout the summer of 2011, in a very different America. Watching it today is an exercise in paradox, because it’s aged well precisely because its own thesis is wrong.

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