Film, Netflix, Book: About Tom Ripley

Everyone knows who Tom Ripley is. Well, everyone who watched “Ripley,” the recent Netflix series starring Andrew Scott, that is—or saw “The Talented Mister Ripley,” the 1999 movie starring Matt Damon.

If you’ve somehow seen neither, here’s all you need to know: Ripley is a charming American grifter who is amoral and slick as a weasel and who unfailingly gets away with murder.

Patricia Highsmith’s original 1955 Ripley story was the inspiration for both of the above as well as several other movies, including a 1960 French film starring Alain Delon.

In “Purple Noon” (“Plein Soleil”), the impossibly good-looking 26-year-old Delon plays Tom. He is sent by American businessman Herbert Greenleaf on an all-expense-paid mission: to convince Herbert’s itinerant playboy son Dickie to return from the Amalfi Coast and join the family business. Tom takes him up on the offer, meets with Dickie and his GF Marge, fails in his appointed task, comes to blows with Dickie and disposes of his body at sea.

Tom assumes Dickie’s identity, creating a phony passport, and taking over his income by forging bank withdrawals. He hides away in Rome, and when Freddie Miles, an American friend of Dickie, comes to question Tom about the latter’s disappearance, he suspects foul play and Tom kills him too. A cat-and-mouse game between Tom and the police ensues. Meanwhile, Marge is also asking a lot of pesky questions and is somewhat bewildered by the fact that her love letters from “Dickie” are typewritten.

While “Purple Noon” follows Highsmith’s novel pretty closely, Henri Decas’s cinematography competes for your attention, enveloping you in a world of yachts and sumptuous interiors that I suspect the author never dreamed of. The 1999 film directed by Anthony Minghella starring Matt Damon and Jude Law similarly emphasizes the picture-perfect setting of the Amalfi Coast but portrays the Dickie-Ripley friendship as a homoerotic one.

Twenty-five years later, we now have the Netflix series “Ripley” starring Andrew Scott. Filmed in black-and-white, to give it a noir-ish feel, this version of the story portrays Ripley as a cold-blooded killer who has no passion except to score other people’s money and to stay out of the clutches of anyone who would dare expose his criminal behavior.

Highsmith’s first sequel to the original story—“Ripley Goes Underground”—reveals that Tom has not only survived being implicated in Greenleaf’s murder but has flourished as a crooked art dealer, living large in the French countryside and committing the occasional murder when the going gets tough. Tom spends hours figuring out how to cover his tracks, and it is to the author’s credit that these details keep us involved and actually rooting for him. I can’t wait to read Sequel #2. Stay tuned!

Like this review? Follow me at “What Does Aug Think?” at acsntn.substack.com. Thank you!