Ripley Often Makes The Jump From Printed Page To Movies

Patricia Highsmith is no stranger to the movies.

The Texas-born novelist (1921-95) saw her work adapted by the likes of Alfred Hitchcock (“Strangers on a Train,” 1951), Rene Clement (“Purple Noon,” 1960), Wim Wenders (“The American Friend,” 1977) and Anthony Minghella (“The Talented Mr. Ripley,” 1999).

Highsmith wrote with a noir kind of sensibility that, like many of the great mystery films of the late 1940s, lurks in the cracks between good and evil. It’s a world where morality is situational rather than enduring, where fulfillment is a rare quantity and happiness virtually a myth.

And no character exists more completely in that shadow world than Tom Ripley.

In the first novel, he is living in a seedy part of Manhattan, barely a step ahead of the law because of a postal scam he is working. Salvation comes along in the form of a rich businessman who promises to pay Tom if he goes to Italy, finds his son and convinces him to return home.

Tom seeks out the boy, preppy slacker Dickie Greenleaf, and is so taken with him that he — well, he ends up wanting literally to become him. And so the mystery progresses.

Ripley was Highsmith’s most complete creation. He’s an absolute psychopath, capable of horrendous crimes, but hardly a predatory serial killer. Ripley kills for gain, maybe even out of a sense of displaced passion, but he doesn’t exhibit the typical cycle of behavior that causes most real-life serial murderers to repeat their crimes.

If you don’t provoke Tom Ripley, if you just leave him alone to live his life in peace, he’s likely not to take any notice of you. Rouse him and, like Hannibal Lecter, he’s liable to snap.

Of the above films, all of which are available on video (“Stranger” and “Ripley” on DVD, also), the latter three use one Ripley story or another as their basis. Highsmith wrote at least five Ripley novels, but “Purple Noon” and “The Talented Mr. Ripley” are based on her first. (Wenders played fast and loose with the 1974 novel “Ripley’s Game” to craft “American Friend,” which stars Dennis Hopper.)

Although it’s Minghella’s film that is now out on video/DVD (see capsule review below), Clement’s “Purple Noon” deserves special mention.

Starring French pretty boy Alain Delon, “Purple Noon” unfolds more like a Hitchcock mystery than Minghella’s psychological study. It follows Ripley (Delon) as he slips into the good life, kills to maintain it and then squirms as the ever-present police move inexorably closer.

Clement’s climax is hardly Highsmith, but it sure is exciting.

The week’s major releases on video:

The Talented Mr. Ripley ***

Based on the first of Patricia Highsmith’s novels about the amoral Tom Ripley, this Anthony Minghella (“The English Patient”) film offers up an intriguing story, a cast of swell-to-look-at actors (Matt Damon, Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Cate Blanchett) and Italian locations that are to die for — which some characters, of course, do.

The only thing the film doesn’t offer is a climax, or a conclusion, likely to please anyone preferring a more complete ending (as did Rene Clement’s 1960 adaptation “Purple Noon”). Tom Ripley (Damon) is a pretender, a chameleon looking for a reality to inhabit, and he finds it in rich, arrogant Dickie Greenleaf (Law), who is slumming in 1950s Italy with his fiance Marge (Paltrow). But Tom doesn’t like to lose what he most wants, which leads to … well, problems.

It’s not clear how we’re supposed to feel about Tom; there is a kind of justice to some of his crimes. But the real problem is that Minghella stops several pages short of Highsmith’s novel and, in the process, he avoids presenting Ripley as the monster he really is. Is a sequel in the works? (VHS/DVD) Rated R.

Hanging Up **

Three sisters — played by Meg Ryan, Diane Keaton and Lisa Kudrow — are forced to confront their lifelong dysfunctional roles when their father (Walter Matthau) comes face to face with impending death. If this sounds like a drama, then recheck the cast: It’s a dramedy, meaning that any and all dark moments are countered by the trademark comedy of the actors involved.

Keaton is the older sis, a business-woman who fails in her role as the mother surrogate. Kudrow is the youngest, whose pathetic attempts to be an actress match her inability to forge an effective life. Ryan is the caretaker, the one who tries to recapture the family she never had. But mom is gone, Dad is self-absorbed to a fault and her two sisters each have their own demons to battle. There’s some good stuff here, but most of it gets lost in what is fairly lame humor, most of it surrounding a finally aging Walter Matthau. (VHS/DVD) Rated PG-13.