[Movie Clip]
David Hast: Scott, have you seen Purple Noon?
Scott Vander Werf: I have seen Purple Noon based on the novel The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. I've also seen the 1999 version that Anthony Mengele wrote and directed, and I've also read the book The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Purple Noon is amazing, it's great, it's a great adaptation.
DH: Yeah, this Patricia Highsmith's work has made it into a few different formats now. I have not read the book, any of the books, but I have seen The Talented Mr. Ripley with Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law, which came 40 years after this movie we're talking about, the first version. I've also seen Vim Vender's 1977 film, The American Friend, which is the third in the Ripley
SVW: Yeah, it's based on the third book.
DH: With Dennis Hopper and Bruno Gantz.
SVW: Yeah, Ripley's Game is the name of that novel.
DH: And now there's a, I have not seen, have you seen the new series? There's a Netflix series that started 2024 called Ripley.
SVW: I have not seen that. Actually the first adaptation, and it must have been quite different, was actually a TV version in 1956, Studio One Anthology. The show was called Studio One. It was an anthology show where every week it was a different story. But it had to be like an hour long. I'm sure that it's really changed to be able to get it on TV in the 1950s.
DH: Yeah, well, by many critics' views and my own view, having seen three of the movie versions and certainly comparing it to the other version of the same book, which is The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Talented Mr. Ripley is a good movie. It's a good thriller. Matt Damon, Jude Law, but... Purple Noon is a great movie and the spirit of it is much more interesting.
SVW: And the way it's shot, it's, you know, even though it's not technically not considered part of the French New Wave, he was a director of that generation or maybe even preceding the generation.
DH: Little older, yeah…
SVW: Yeah, because he started making movies.
DH: …Rodé Clément.
SVW: Before World War II. The way that he uses setting, the setting of Italy is just gorgeous. And he does a combination of, he was also a cinematographer, so he does a combination of moving a handheld camera along with the more traditional stationary camera.
DH: Yeah, we should talk about…summarize the movie, but yes, I really enjoyed the camera work and it was that kind of characteristic that the French New Wave was one of the movements that introduced a lot…they used smaller, lighter weight cameras instead of getting weighed down by these giant 35 millimeter cameras that, you know, were being used in in Hollywood and elsewhere. And so there is a lot of handheld work, not just on the many boat scenes where you have to go handheld, but even a lot of the other scenes, they use a lot of lightweight handheld kind of movement. But let's talk about the story: So basically it's a story of Tom Ripley. It's called the Talented Mr. Ripley, who's this character. He's…I would call him an amoral schemer. It turns out that he's sent over to Italy by his he's… he runs into someone who he pretends to be the college room having known from college and he's supposed to retrieve this guy, Philippe in the movie. His name is Philippe for his father who's a spoiled rich kid from the United States like a spoiled trust fund kid and Ripley has been sent over. He's getting paid a few thousand dollars if he can bring this guy back to New York. So he gets involved with this Philippe and his fiancée Marge and just starts having a good time with them in Italy and even lets him know, yeah, your father's paying me, I'm supposed to take you back. And Philippe's like, okay, well, let's have a good time first. I don't know if I want to do that, but. And then what happens, Roger Ebert had a great line about this. The great critic Roger Ebert said, Purple Noon is essentially about an aimless young man who has stumbled onto his life's work. And that work is being a completely ruthless criminal.
SVW: Be's a sociopath. He's a psychopath. He has no…he's your classic sort of psychopath. But he also…he's a scammer. That's how he makes it, that's how he survives is by scamming people.
DH: Right, and we see it right from the opening scene. He's very tricky in the things he does and goes undetected in little things. But then the important stuff starts when they go out on a boat. So, this movie's beautifully shot in the Mediterranean and mostly around Italy and even parts of Sicily. And they’re out on a boat, the three of them, Philippe, Tom Ripley, and Marge. And what happens is there are these great scenes where there's a sort of antagonism between the two of them, even though they're friends. They become friends, but there’s a competition between them and you can tell that Ripley is jealous, right? Ripley is grown up, probably poor, and he doesn't think that a spoiled trust fund kid deserves it, and he feels he's entitled, and he starts joking around with Philippe, and the two of them are joking back and forth about, hey, know, “I could murder you and steal your identity,” and he lays out all these specific things he would do.
SVW: Philippe actually eggs him on. He's like, well, how would you do it?
DH: Yeah. He says, I would learn to forge your signature and I see you use a typewriter for a lot of things. I would use your typewriter to write things and I would, you know, steal your passport and they're like, ha ha ha ha, right? And then what happens? Ripley stabs him right after they're talking about this. He suddenly stabs him, which, this is a spoiler, ladies and gentlemen, but there's a lot of movie that follows this and that's actually the real story here.
DH: Right and how he proceeds to do exactly what he told Philippe was gonna do steal his life steal his identity steal his life.
SVW: And right before that you see how the Ripley character has to be a man of action to be able to manipulate whatever goes on after that so that he survives and doesn't get caught.
DH: Yeah, and he has he gets pushed into other criminality, which we won't spoil. But there's some great scenes, which wouldn't have been allowed in America under the production code because they show how to commit crimes. There are those great scenes where he learns how to forge Philippe's signature. He gets a projector and projects it really large and practices over and over, drawing it, like tracing over it really big, then gets down to…practices his voice, and we see how he alters the passport, all that stuff.
SVW: And he has taken enough of his things as well to be able to pose. And he essentially becomes Philippe.
DH: Yeah. But he has quite the juggling act, right? Like he's being Philippe and he's being Tom at the same time. He's checked into two different hotels at one point.
SVW: He has to maintain Tom because he has to go back and forth because at a certain point authorities get involved, detectives, the police get involved, and then there's all sorts of people who are friends of Philippe's who he runs into. And then of course there's Marge as well. And then there's Philippe's father who comes into play as well. So there's all sorts of things that are going on.
DH: But here's the thing, everything we've described right now sounds like, it's a good crime thriller. And that's what I had to say about The Talent of Mr. Ripley in 1999. It's a good crime thriller, but it's not special. Why is this one special? And part of it is the incredible performance by young Alain Delon, who became an international star, French actor. But he was only like 25 when he made this movie. It was early in his career. And he plays the sort of cold, amoral Ripley perfectly, doesn't he?
SVW: He does. From the book, he is more like Ripley in the book than Matt Damon is in the 1999 version.
DH: Yeah, Matt Damon's sort of like nervous and he's almost like you see in many movies where someone commits a crime and then they have to keep committing other crimes to cover it up. That plot point is the same in Purple Noon, but it's like, as we said before, it's like Ripley has discovered what he's best at, what he's talented at. And it is all these crimes. Also, the whole look of it is just beautiful. The movie, the French title of Purple Noon was Plans Soleil, which literally means “Full Sun.” And what's great about this movie is in every way, in many ways anyway, it's like a film noir. And yet visually, it's the opposite of film noir. Instead of black and white, night scenes, urban, it's on a boat in bright sunlight in the Mediterranean with bright colors most of the movie.
SVW: And the cinematography is by Henri, is it Dekay?
DH: Henri Decae.
SVW: It’s just top of the line artistry.
DH: And then we also see this view of the Mediterranean and Italy. In the town of Mr. Ripley, of course, Anthony Minghella had the task of trying to make 1999 Italy when he shot on location look like the late 50s or early 60s. But Purple Noon is shot in 1960 in Italy and you really do feel like you're seeing a world that doesn't quite exist anymore.
SVW: Yes. It's interesting because having read the book, I see in both the 1999 version and this version, there are big changes. Although the, the 1999 version, supposedly it's more faithful to the book, but there are still enough changes that it's not completely, absolutely faithful. This one is more faithful to the tone of the book. And what you were mentioning earlier, the actual character of Ripley is more faithful in this adaptation than in the modern one.
DH: Yeah, it doesn't surprise me that the book would have that subtlety to it. One last thing we could say about it that's interesting is, again, this is a Hitchcockian kind of crime movie. And we did a show a couple before this one on Diabolique, the French crime novel. And in that case, was a French crime novel. And the French director there got the jump on Hitchcock and was able to grab Diabolique before Hitchcock could. And then Hitchcock later on made Vertigo. In this case, Hitchcock got the jump on the French filmmaker, different French filmmaker. The very first adaptation of a Patricia Highsmith novel was the great Alfred Hitchcock, Strangers on a Train.
SVW: And that's one of the great Hitchcock movies as well.
DH: Yeah.
SVW: All right, well thanks for joining us.
DH: Thank you, Scott.
