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
