The Colorful Drama of Purple Noon

The recent passing of French leading man Alain Delon called my attention to the fact that, at the start of a long career, he first hit it big in René Clément’s 1960 thriller, Plein Soleil, known to American moviegoers as Purple Noon. I never saw this film until recently, but its title instantly had meaning for me. Back when I was in high school, my French teacher handed out extra credit for various experiences involving the French language. If you dined at a local French restaurant and swore that you’d spoke en français to the waiter, you got points. (This proved very popular with my family, all of whom loved the opportunity to further my scholastic career by dining out.) You also got points for attending a French-language film and trying hard not to read the subtitles. Most of us kids, thoroughly brainwashed by Hollywood, had no interest in checking out a film in French. And our teacher, in recommending Purple Noon (then playing at a local art house), said nothing to convince us that we’d actually find this film entertaining. As a consequence, I missed out on more extra credit, as well as a chance to see a really fascinating cinematic game of cat-and-mouse.

 Purple Noon (certainly a garish title) turns out to be the first screen adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s famous 1955 thriller, The Talented Mr. Ripley. Forty-four years later, Anthony Minghella wrote and directed a much more complicated English-language version. It starred a young Matt Damon and featured such rising talents as Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Cate Blanchett, and Philip Seymour Hoffman in a tale of a young man who’ll go to any lengths (including bloody ones) to achieve the lifestyle he feels he deserves. Highsmith herself strongly preferred Delon’s take on Tom Ripley, which relies less on pathos and more on the audience’s ability to identify with a young man whose creative improvisations help him get what he wants out of life.

 It's been pointed out that Ripley’s story goes well into film noir territory, but shifts the formula by being shot in brilliant color in some of the world’s most beautifully sunlit places. Much of the action of Purple Noon takes place on a gorgeous yacht off the coast of Italy. That’s where a feckless, and very wealthy, young San Franciscan named Philippe Greenleaf sets out on a cruise along with his fiancée, Marge, and his amusing new buddy, Tom Ripley. Philippe is not a very gracious host, especially after he discovers Tom trying on his clothes. What happens between them sets the stage for a series of deceptions in which Tom, back on shore, creatively pretends (with the help of a portable typewriter and some glue) that Philippe is alive and well, happily ensconced at a local hostelry. His on-and-off masquerade as Philippe leads to additional mayhem, as well as to his passionate wooing of Marge, for reasons that eventually become all too plain.

 It's curious (and perhaps disturbing) that British author Highsmith imagined Tom Ripley as a born-and-bred American. Her multiple follow-up novels to The Talented Mr. Ripley have led to several additional films as well as a 2024 Netflix miniseries. Obviously, this is a young man whose exploits we love to follow, even if we don’t consider him a model of wholesome behavior. The French version, Purple Noon, largely sidesteps the novel’s obvious homoerotic subtext: what else would you expect in 1960? Still, this is a marvelous intro to a sinister but fascinating world. Too bad it’s too late for me to get extra credit.