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Purple Noon (vhs):

Amazon.com Essentials: A member of the middle generation of French filmmakers between Renoir and the New Wave, René Clément was a strong visual stylist who tried on different subjects and genres: documentaries, semidocumentaries, wartime dramas, comedies. In Purple Noon he showed a strong facility for feverish film noir, and the results are quite memorable. Based on Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, the film stars Alain Delon as the notoriously amoral Ripley (a character also played, albeit quite differently, by Dennis Hopper in Wim Wenders's The American Friend). Envious of a playboy pal (Maurice Ronet) having a luxurious time on the Mediterranean, Ripley decides to murder the man and assume his identity. The subsequent suspense concerns the dirty deed done and the aftermath of complicated cover-ups, and in the best Hitchcockian sense you can never quite tell whose side you're on as Ripley's efforts at survival are followed in meticulous detail. Mesmerizing to watch, saturated in light and color, and topped by Delon at his most icy, Purple Noon is a terrific discovery for enthusiasts of film noir and the French cinema. --Tom Keogh