\n<\/p>\n
Tom Ripley\u2019s background is always sketchy. Patricia Highsmith provides only a few rudimentary details in the first few chapters of \u201cThe Talented Mr. Ripley,\u201d her 1955 novel that kicked off a series of five books about the elusive con artist. Tom lives in New York, in near-destitute circumstances. He has some friends \u2014 acquaintances, really \u2014 whom he hates, mentally labeling them \u201cthe riffraff, the vulgarians, the slobs.\u201d He wants nothing more than to be rid of them, and after the first few chapters, he succeeds. He receives money from an aunt in Boston; she raised him after his parents drowned in the harbor there. He hates her, too.<\/p>\n
When we meet Tom, he has been committing check fraud through the mail, amassing payments in the amount of $1,863.14 that he does not plan to cash. The con job was, he thinks, \u201cno more than a practical joke, really. Good clean sport.\u201d He\u2019ll destroy the checks before boarding the ship that will take him to Europe, where he\u2019s tasked with hunting down Dickie Greenleaf, the scion of a shipbuilding mogul who\u2019s been wasting time, and money, in Italy.<\/p>\n
The curious thing about these features of Tom Ripley\u2019s life is that they add up to nothing. Highsmith structures them as telling details, the kinds of specifics that writers employ like shorthand to build a person in the reader\u2019s mind. But in fact, we get very little from them, and at every turn our attempts to wrap our heads around this character are rebuffed. You might think Tom is a man of taste and talent, except he doesn\u2019t exhibit any real taste, and the talent seems limited to a knack for forgery and impersonation. You might think he\u2019s a malevolent mastermind seeking to bilk a wealthy family of their fortune, but he\u2019s really just pathetic, far more concerned with making sure the Greenleafs view him as a man of their own social class. Unfortunately, he\u2019s charmless.<\/p>\n
Tom is not particularly handsome, clever or well-connected. He\u2019s just miserable, but he doesn\u2019t have much in the way of plans, or goals, beyond getting away from where he is.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
This does not make Tom Ripley a screen-ready hero. He\u2019s not even really a strong template for an antihero. But that has not stopped filmmakers from trying. Five films and now a Netflix series, starring a parade of alluring actors, have tried out various angles on the Ripley question. Who is this guy, really? A criminal? A climber? A sociopath? A thief?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Who knows? He\u2019s a mystery, which is what makes him so primed for reinvention. A close look at the various Mr. Ripleys suggests something both confounding and fascinating: Ripley is less character than cipher, an outline of a figure onto which filmmakers (and audiences) have projected their cultural moments. Watching them all is like watching eras swing past you in living color. (And, eventually, in black and white.)<\/p>\n
Ren\u00e9 Cl\u00e9ment\u2019s 1960 adaptation, \u201cPurple Noon\u201d<\/a><\/strong> (streaming on the Criterion Channel<\/a> and on Kanopy<\/a>; for rent on most major platforms<\/a>) stars a very young Alain Delon. It\u2019s a curious film, in that even the Americans speak and act French. (Dickie\u2019s name is changed to Philippe.) Tom, as played by Delon, is gorgeously off-putting. He\u2019s far more alluring than Highsmith\u2019s version, but in an unsettling and grasping sense, as if something is not quite right upstairs. You can see the seeds of Barry Keoghan\u2019s grifter Oliver from \u201cSaltburn,\u201d<\/a> a vulnerable exterior concealing something more conniving beneath.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The Tom Ripley of \u201cPurple Noon\u201d is an existential hero, in tune with the tenor of his time, and with the novel, too \u2014 after all, the movie was released only a few years after the book\u2019s publication. In his own strange sense, he\u2019s self-made, the product of amoral choices that define his character, a man without wit or scruples. Held up against the book and its sequels, this seems like a perfect way to translate Tom, even if the details are transposed Frenchily. He is a character without a single essence \u2014 he\u2019s not a born killer, not a smooth operator, not really anything in particular \u2014 who is slowly defined over the course of many books: an existential hero, in the classic Sartrean sense. It\u2019s also why he\u2019s so alarming and addictive. You cannot quite predict what Tom Ripley will do.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It took 17 years to see another cinematic Ripley, this time in \u201cThe American Friend<\/a><\/strong>\u201d (streaming on Criterion<\/a> and for rent on most major platforms<\/a>). Directed by Wim Wenders, this loose adaptation of \u201cRipley\u2019s Game,\u201d the third book in Highsmith\u2019s series, stars counterculture icon Dennis Hopper as Tom, and it\u2019s set in Hamburg, Germany \u2014 another city Highsmith\u2019s Ripley never lives.<\/p>\n Tom, now involved in an art forgery scheme, feels slighted by an upright German framer (that is, he frames art) played by Bruno Ganz. It turns into a thriller, heightened noir, a terrifically fascinating take on the character that flamboyantly emphasizes his American-ness. What\u2019s most arresting about this Tom is the outfits Wenders puts him in. He\u2019s shown early in New York, purchasing a massive Stetson, which he dons proudly. \u201cDo you wear that hat in Hamburg?\u201d a friend asks.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with a cowboy in Hamburg?\u201d he replies.<\/p>\n Indeed. The film\u2019s title emphasizes that Tom is American, but so does his get-up: jeans, a denim jacket, his Marlboros, his T-shirts, his loud taste in home furnishings, and of course his hat, all of which mark him out as an American on the streets of what was West Germany. Highsmith saw the film and at first didn\u2019t like it; later, Wenders has said, she told him that she had changed her mind, and that it \u201ccaptured the essence of that Ripley character better than any other films.\u201d<\/p>\n What is that essence? It\u2019s America. Tom belongs to a postwar world where American power and wealth are fresh and abundant, but American taste varied wildly based on social class. He is the most American of archetypes, the hustler, hawking art that\u2019s fake. He is vengeful and loyal at the same time, a man with both power and an endearing simplicity. Couple that with the fact that the film was released one year after the American bicentennial \u2014 in a time of national ennui \u2014 and Ripley\u2019s ostentatious Americanness, which contrasts starkly with the aestheticized Europhilia of Highsmith\u2019s character, takes on even more significance.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Both Delon and Hopper deliver midcentury takes on Ripley; by the turn of the millennium, the film business wasn\u2019t looking for their kinds of characters. In 1999, \u201cThe Talented Mr. Ripley<\/a><\/strong>,\u201d Anthony Minghella\u2019s take on the first novel (streaming on Paramount+<\/a>; for rent on most major platforms<\/a>), ushered in a different type of Ripley. This version is sometimes held up as faithful to the novel, but that\u2019s a misapprehension. Several prominent characters are completely invented. The body count is higher, too. Most important, though, Tom has undergone a transformation. He is now a relatively talented, or at least employable, pianist who is able to quickly develop an appreciation for jazz and to rub shoulders with wealthy Manhattanites. He\u2019s pathetically needy but also goofily handsome, all teeth but, let\u2019s face it, with the look of a movie star. (Damon was swapping in for Leonardo DiCaprio, the filmmakers\u2019 first choice.)<\/p>\n In this version, Tom is also clearly gay, if closeted perhaps even to himself. There are hints in the novel that Tom may be gay, or more accurately worried about appearing gay, in a vague way that suggests he prefers not to look too hard at his own desires. (Highsmith said she didn\u2019t think he was gay<\/a>; he deploys sex only when it\u2019s absolutely necessary to secure his station.) But the film is propelled by his desire for Dickie \u2014 to be his, to be him. Watching it, you\u2019re reminded of what movies aimed at general audiences were like in 1999, one of the greatest years in Hollywood history. Everyone was beautiful. Everyone was very thin. And everyone seemed to be driven, primarily, by sex.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That\u2019s even more obvious in the subsequent movies, made to capitalize on Ripley fever (and its five Oscar nominations), \u201cRipley\u2019s Game\u201d<\/a><\/strong> (2004) and \u201cRipley Under Ground\u201d<\/strong> (2005). The former, directed by Liliana Cavani (and for rent on most major platforms<\/a>), stars John Malkovich and treads much of the same ground as \u201cThe American Friend,\u201d but with a very different kind of Tom. Malkovich always brings an air of the discomfiting to his roles, but his Tom is quite different from ravishing Delon or creepy Damon, and not just because he\u2019s older. This guy is now just a seductive con artist, a genius with a knack for pulling off sophisticated deceptions and bedding beautiful women. He might freak a few people out, but only because he\u2019s so ruthless.<\/p>\n This is not Highsmith\u2019s Ripley. It\u2019s Hollywood\u2019s Ripley. Whereas the adaptation of \u201cThe Talented Mr. Ripley\u201d gives Tom a healthy dose of shame and social climbing desperation, \u201cRipley\u2019s Game\u201d is about a suave monster, a cross between the hypercompetent antiheroes who would soon take over prestige television and a conscience-free serial killer.<\/p>\n \u201cRipley Under Ground\u201d similarly features a hypercompetent Tom stripped of his weirdness. Directed by Roger Spottiswoode, it\u2019s probably the most ludicrous of the five movies. (It\u2019s also the hardest one to find; it\u2019s not even rentable on digital platforms or, as far as I can tell, available on a DVD that will play in the United States) The movie stars Barry Pepper, with flowing blond locks. He\u2019s not good in it, but he is supposed to be not just a con man and a killer, but also a player, immensely desirable, irresistible. This is not a Tom Ripley I recognize.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The latter Ripleys reflect a Hollywood machine with a very narrow imagination. Could you even have a protagonist who wasn\u2019t both sexually obsessed and insanely attractive? Would anyone watch a movie where the protagonist wasn\u2019t trying to seduce beautiful people?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Thinking about the other Ripleys when watching the new Netflix<\/a> series \u201c<\/strong>Ripley,<\/a><\/strong>\u201d<\/strong> stylishly adapted and directed by Steven Zaillian and shot by the great Robert Elswit, can provoke whiplash. It\u2019s in black and white, the opposite of previous adaptations\u2019 lush sensuality. Andrew Scott, who plays this Ripley, hews as closely to Highsmith\u2019s character as I can imagine, aside from being much older (and thus, more desperate and pathetic). His face is often blank, leaving you wondering if he is great at hiding or, alternately, just has nothing to hide. Scott molds his handsomeness into ordinariness; you would never stop to look at him on the street. He seems almost simple, which is why his arc is so chilling. Perhaps a TV show was the right way to give us a window into Ripley\u2019s strangeness all along.<\/p>\n But it\u2019s not all that interesting to rank the Ripleys. Pop culture is most fascinating as a mirror reflecting us and the people who make it, and Ripley has provided unnervingly canny reflections. Highsmith\u2019s Ripley gives a perfect blank slate onto which generations of filmmakers have projected their ideas about the world, and about what it is we want to watch. In the end, perhaps, the frightening, alluring, dangerous thing about Tom Ripley is that he is simply us.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n