The movie
Purple Noon is a 1960 French crime thriller movie directed by Rene Clement. The original French title is Plein Soleil. The cast includes Alain Delon, Maurice Ronet and Marie Laforet.
Handsome young American Tom Ripley (played by Delon) has been sent to Italy by the father of the wealthy playboy Philippe Greenleaf (played by Ronet) to persuade him to return to San Francisco and take over the family business.
Philippe has no intention to do so. Tom becomes fixated on Philippe and his fiancée, Marge (played by Laforet). He starts to covet the life of luxury and leisure in the beautiful seaside town they live.
After some time, Philippe is getting bored with Tom. Moreover, during a yachting trip he accidentally leaves Tom to drift for hours in the blazing sun.
Back on board, Tom gets a plan to kill Philippe and steal his identity. While the two men are alone on a boat, Philippe offers Tom a substantial amount of money to leave him and Marge alone. Instead Tom fatally stabs Philippe. The corpse is dumped into the sea and Tom returns to the seaside town. He informs Marge that Philippe has decided to stay away.
The scene
Tom goes to Rome and we witness how he manages to skillfully replace Philippe’s picture with his own in Philippe’s passport, forges Philippe’s signature and eventually takes over the dead man’s wealth, identity and lifestyle.
The film is based on the 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith.
The 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley was also a very successful adaptation of the same novel. It was directed by Anthony Minghella and the protagonists were Matt Damon, Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow. It has an IMDB score which is by 0.3 lower than the original one.
Purple Noon certainly deserves a leading place in any cinephile library.
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