Purple Noon

viewed February 19, 2000 on video

For full information about this film, click here

1959 French adaptation of the same novel that inspired The Talented Mr. Ripley seems more in tune to the innate trashiness of the novel's subject than the elegant, full-blown recent version.  A world away the 90's-era tabloid apologetics that inform and ultimately bog down Anthony Minghella's version, Purple Noon seems to be made in an era before filmmakers and audiences identified with villainy.  Director Rene Clement gives Alain Delon's Ripley no unmotivation for his sinister plottings, so that his calculations can be enjoyed purely in functional terms, with no messy psychoanalytic explanations running interference.  The novelty of the anti-hero may have worn off by now, but in its day the unflinching portrayal of an unremorsefully evil protagonist must have sent shivers down audiences' spines.  There is real joy in watching steely blue-eyed Delon plot to kill his wealthy best friend Greenleaf and assume his identity. 

Most dazzling is the scene where Ripley admits to Greenleaf that he intends to kill him.  The impact on the audience of seeing a man guiltlessly getting away with murder can best be deduced from the clumsy note of moralism slapped at the end, almost as an apology. 

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