Purple Noon's Sublime Beauty
Patricia Highsmith’s Talented Mr. Ripley contains all of the qualities of a fascinating character study. It is a novel that takes care not to admonish Tom for his pathological yearning, aiming instead to absorb the reader into its world, making them volitionally complicit in Ripley’s murderous desires and envies.
Incidentally, the French title means “full sun,” or “bright sun,” referring I think to the clarity of things at sea. The strange English title, “Purple Noon,” comes from a poem by Shelley that contrasts the poet’s dark mood with the bright sea and sunshine. In the same way the film contrasts Tom’s dark scheme with the bright Mediterranean sea and sky marvelously photographed in gleaming Eastmancolor by cinematographer Henri Decaë. Out there things are clear; on land they shift and turn mysteriously. -- Norman Holland
While Minghella’s adaptation remained true to certain elements of the novel, there are a few key notable differences, such as Tom's sexuality. In Clément's version, Tom is depicted as heterosexual. Additionally, in the novel, Tom sees Marge as an encumbrance, yet in Purple Noon, she becomes an object of desire.
Clément’s adaptation of Highsmith’s novel is unreservedly American in every sense of the word. What we see is that Purple Noon is undoubtedly a beautiful film, encapsulating the culmination of America’s soul at this time, with all of its signification. It is a film that captured the postwar American meridian. The audience may indubitably view the film and hearken back to the “civilizational peak” of America, disregarding that it was during this period that materialism and self-actualization were considered the highest goals of life.
Tom Ripley embodies this postwar American maxim, completely solidified through Delon's beauty and further bulwarked by his perennial yearning toward material prosperity—absent morality. In the 50s and 60s, American standards were less Protestant in character and had begun to adopt a more temporal orientation. Set against the backdrop of an untainted Italian paradise; we see an inimitable idealism, with the film's aesthetic intentionally bringing about feelings of equanimity, lust, and pining. In every sense of the word, Purple Noon is categorically materialistic. The characters are not guided by a compass of religious morality or notions of labor as virtue, but by an insatiable hankering of temporal pleasure.
In film noir, shades of grey, dark shadows, and low and Dutch angles augment seediness and immorality in the narrative; yet despite the contents of the film, Purple Noon is ubiquitously baked in sunlight. There are no “murky labyrinths” or confined spaces; all is open and colorful, inviting the viewer to enter and savior what is shown on screen. The film is saturated with affluence and opulence: color values, textures, location, wardrobe, and even Delon, the perfect distillation of a sort of idealized Catholic beauty and form. Clément bombards the viewer with lavish landscapes of Italy, accentuating a beauty that is seemingly vast and abundant. Italy itself is presented as “underpopulated and unpolluted, a paradise for footloose Americans” (O’Brien, 2012).
At moments throughout the film, the audience can feel some compassion for Tom as an individual, whose poverty is as circumstantial as the wealth of Dickie. In his relentless pursuit for the very best that life has to offer, the audience begins to feel that the only thing that will justify Tom’s choice in murdering Dickie, is success itself.
Clément’s adaptation of the novel takes some liberty with its ending, perhaps understandably so given the time it was made, but despite this, there is still a moment of triumph as Tom Ripley basks in the sunlight, even as he approaches his impending end. The cinematography here is superlative, emphasizing the visceral summer heat, as if the ambient temperature were melting away the facade of civility and revealing the narcissistic firmament beneath.
In regards to the message, one cannot help but take away Geoffrey O'Brien's remarks about the film, where he wrote, "you really can have whatever you want, as long as you’re willing to kill people and are clever enough to cover up your crimes." share