The Screengrab : nino rota

Believe It Or Not: Patrica Highsmith's Ripley, On Screen

Phil Nugent — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:00:00 GMT

The New York Times recently noted that this year marks the eightieth birthday of Tom Ripley, the favorite antihero of the late novelist Patricia Highsmith, who between The Talented Mr. Ripley (which was written in 1954, and in which Tom was 25 years old) and 1991's Ripley Under Water (published four years before Highsmith's death) wrote five books about him. Highsmith's Ripley is good-looking, well-built, implicitly gay but basically asexual, beyond suave, and sociopathic. When first glimpsed in The Talented Mr. Ripley, he's scuffling out a grifter's existence in New York before being drafted by the rich parents of a distant acquaintance, Dickie Greenleaf, to go to Italy and drag their slumming son back to the States. Instead, Ripley insinuates himself into Dickie's life, kills him, and essentially takes his place. He remains an American expatriate in Europe, where he uses his refined eye to become a formidable figure in the art forgery business.

Highsmith adored her creation. Ripley may be without conscience, but he has his own bizarre code, and he isn't casually murderous--he kills only as a last resort, though that's probably because dead bodies make for a mess. In some ways, Highsmith was the Ayn Rand of misanthropic hard-boiled crime novelists, and she seems to have judged Ripley as a superior sort of creature: he deserved to go undetected and live high on the spoils of his crimes so long as he was wittier, smarter, and had better taste than his victims. Highsmith's genius for plotting and nasty twists made her attractive to Hollywood, but her sensibility was too twisted and nasty for most mainstream filmmakers. One of Hitchcock's best movies, Strangers on a Train, is based on one of her non-Ripley novels, but in the movie, the hero, Guy, is horrified to discover that Bruno, the flirty psycho he met by chance has murdered Guy's estranged wife as a favor to him and now expects Guy to return the favor by murdering Bruno's father. In the novel, Guy is reluctant to fulfill his half of the bargain, but he gets over it. Likewise, there have been five movies made so far based on the Ripley novels--including the most recent, Roger Spottiswoode's 2005 Ripley Under Ground with Barry Pepper, which has yet to see either a theatrical or DVD release in the U.S. How have filmmakers succeeded in their attempts to bring Highsmith's hero to the movies? The results are all over the map:

PURPLE NOON (1960), directed by René Clément and based on The Talented Mr. Ripley, probably remains the purest expression of Highsmith's sensibility to make it to the screen. Shot by Henri Decaë and with a score by Nino Rota, it has a distinctive feel that's both lush and chilly. The movie made an international star of its Ripley, Alain Delon, and Highsmith was publicly approving of the actor as a proper physical match for her character. Purple Noon came out at a time when Americans were used to going to see European movies such as La Dolce Vita and La Notte for the spectacle of glamorous people behaving badly in photogenic locations, and Purple Noon fit right in with that trend, though in keeping with Highsmith's vision, it isn't obviously moralistic. But if you know the novel, you can spot the places where Highsmith's viewpoint has been softened a little: Philippe (nee' Dickie) Greenleaf isn't such an ass that you can think he has it coming to him, and Ripley actually gets caught at the end. That never happened in the books, and it hasn't happened in the movies since.

THE AMERICAN FRIEND (1977): The German director Wim Wenders made this version of the third book in the series, Ripley's Game. In some ways, it's the smartest and richest of all these films, though it also has the sorriest Ripley, hands down: Dennis Hopper, then deep into his drug-fueled freak-of-the-week period. Hopper was either unaware of or indifferent to the whole notion that his character was meant to seem classy enough to pass through the rarefied circles in which he did his business without setting off alarm bells. It's supposed to be a major insult when an art restorer--Jonathan, played by Bruno Ganz--who has heard rumors that Ripley is a shady character declines to shake his hand, but Hopper looks and acts like somebody who should be used to getting driven away from people's establishments at the wrong end of a fire hose. The plot here turns on that strange ethical code of Ripley's: as payback for the insult of the unshaken hand, he sets the wheels in motion that result in Jonathan, who is sick and in need of money, being hired to perform a contract killing. But then the contractor wants Jonathan to perform a second murder, and Ripley, who sees that as out of line, joins forces with Jonathan, first to help him pull off the follow-up killing and then to face off against the murdered man's vengeful associates. Hopper may have been hired not so much because he might be right for the part as for his status as the director of Easy Rider and the film maudit The Last Movie; having a little fun with the casting, Wenders filled many of the roles that called for gangsters and other untrustworthy types with fellow directors, including Nicholas Ray, Jean Eustache, Peter Lilienthal, Daniel Schmid, and Samuel Fuller. In fact, the best performance in the movie is given by Fuller, as a cigar-chomping Mafia boss toting a gun whose barrel is about half as long as he is tall.

THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY (1999): This second go at Ripley's debut boasts strong performances, especially by Matt Damon as Ripley, Jude Law as Dickie, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Freddie Miles, one of the few characters who managed to drive Ripley to overcome his natural aversion to commit murder. Directed by Anthony Minghella, it's a handsome production, and very impressive on its own terms. It's just that those terms are a flat contradiction of Highsmith's. Minghella and company set out to explain Ripley psychologically by emphasizing his inner struggle over his sexuality and the terrible loneliness he feels, which the mercurial, snobbish Dickie exacerbates by first appearing to accept him as a brother and then coldly shutting him out. Ripley here isn't a natural aristocrat rising to his true level but a frightened child in need of a hug, and the murders he commits aren't cold-blooded chess moves but the desperate acts of a cornered animal. The movie ends with him commiting one more murder (that isn't in the book) that leaves him lonelier, more miserable, and weepier than ever. Maybe the filmmakers thought they were making him more sympathetic. Highsmith, who thought her Ripley was already better than sympathetic because he was fascinating, would have wanted to put this crybaby out of her misery with a champagne bottle upside his head.

RIPLEY'S GAME (2002): This little-seen version of the same novel that inspired The American Friend was directed by Liliana Cavani, an Italian filmmaker best known for the godawful Nazi porn fantasy The Night Porter (1974). It doesn't have the brilliant conceits that decorated the Wenders film, or the atmosphere that enriched it, either. What it does have is John Malkovich as the Ripley of a Highsmith fan's dreams: he may not be the eye candy that Alain Delon was in his prime, but he's certainly convincing as an American who's exiled himself partly out of a sense that he's better than his home country deserves. The movie, which also features Ray Winstone, Lena Headey, and Dougray Scott as the accidental assassin, is a straightforward treatment of the story, and the story is a good one. But the best reason for its existence is that it gives Malkovich a chance to preen. At the climax, with a carload of Mafia killers on the way to his Italian villa, he carefully arranges his various death traps and then settles in for a night and a morning of waiting. It's like watching the last reel of Straw Dogs if the Dustin Hoffman character had been played by HAL 9000.

Yesterday's Hits: Romeo and Juliet (1968, Franco Zeffirelli)

Paul Clark — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 19:00:00 GMT

What made Romeo and Juliet a hit?: While it’s debatable whether Romeo and Juliet is Shakespeare’s finest play, it’s almost certainly his most beloved. After all, not everyone can relate to the trials and tribulations of kings, but most of us know what it’s like to be young and in love. Yet until 1968, all “straight” big-screen adaptations of the play had been cast with adults. By casting a pair of age-appropriate teenagers Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey (who were 17 and 15, respectively, during filming) in the title roles, Zeffirelli’s take on Romeo and Juliet appealed to youth in a way previous productions could not.

While the handsome production values and timeless source material appealed to older moviegoers, it was the attractive stars- along with the story of two idealistic lovers defying their oppressive parents to be together- that helped the film hit home with younger audiences. Romeo and Juliet became one of the great big-screen romances of the late 1960s. Not incidentally, it also spawned the hit song “A Time For Us” (based on Nino Rota’s love theme from the film) that quickly became a staple of many weddings of the day- my own parents' wedding included.

What happened?: For years, Romeo and Juliet sustained a degree of popularity among movie lovers, even after it had disappeared from first-run theatres. But after the rise of video, the film took on a new life as a teaching aid in classrooms across the country. However, rather than increasing the film’s popularity with audiences, this favorite of sixties-era youth suddenly turned into something dry and academic, a movie that was to be suffered through rather than enjoyed. As the years passed, fewer audiences came to Zeffirelli’s film on their own, and by the time Baz Luhrmann made his own pop version of the play in 1996, the love it had once received from moviegoers had long since subsided.

Does Romeo and Juliet still work?: Much to my surprise, it does- quite well, in fact. Like many people my age, I hadn’t seen the film since it was shown to us back in high school, during freshman-year English class. At the time, I barely paid attention to the movie itself, mostly being grateful that we didn’t have any reading to do on the days the movie was playing. But the intervening years- and my greater love for Shakespeare’s work- have allowed me to appreciate how well Zeffirelli captured the spirit of the original play, while at the same time making it completely cinematic.

Naturally, it’s hard to argue with the source material- after all, it’s Shakespeare. But while he made judicious trims to the original text, Zeffirelli was extremely successful at capturing the universal appeal of Romeo and Juliet on film, while keeping it completely in period. It couldn’t have been easy, but Zeffirelli immerses us in the world of pre-Renaissance Verona so sure-handedly that I never once scoffed at the idea of watching actors prancing around in tights and speaking in verse.

Even more than most classical playwrights, it’s difficult to fully appreciate Shakespeare simply by reading the plays. On the page, the language has a tendency to overwhelm the story, so that a reader will often find it difficult to puzzle out everything that’s happening, what with all the dialogue. One of the triumphs of Zeffirelli’s production is how un-stagy it feels. As the events play out onscreen, they work as drama rather than filmed theatre, which gives them an immediacy lacking in many other Shakespeare adaptations.

This is where Zeffirelli’s decision to cast age-appropriate unknowns, rather than older established stars, paid off beautifully. Watching previous productions of Romeo and Juliet- say, the George Cukor version starring Norma Shearer and Leslie Howard- there’s always a degree of self-consciousness to the performances, as if the actors are trying to recapture the impetuousness of youth in order to make the story work. This wasn’t a problem for Whiting and Hussey, who although they sometimes struggled a bit with Shakespeare’s language, had no trouble whatsoever with the tempestuous emotions that are so often stirred up by young love. It’s because of this that I believed these two as Romeo and Juliet in a way I’ve never been able to with other actors, no matter how talented they might be.

Another reason the movie works is because Zeffirelli doesn’t shy away from the more comedic aspects of the film. Many filmmakers are so in awe of Shakespeare that they approach his work like pious students, making stone-faced adaptations of Great Works of Literature. But Zeffirelli recognized that, like almost all of Shakespeare’s plays, Romeo and Juliet contains crowd-pleasing- even “low”- humor. For example, on the page the Nurse feels like little more than a plot device, a servant character who secretly aids the lovers. But as played by Pat Heywood in the film, she’s a serial scene-stealer, attending to her business as she tries- and usually fails- to keep her bawdy side in check.

Zeffirelli’s embracing of the play’s humorous material pays off magnificently in the film’s centerpiece, the confrontation between Mercutio and Tybalt. Most directors would have their sword fight play out solemnly, accompanied by exciting music. But instead, Zeffirelli has the irrepressible Mercutio (John McEnery) clown around with Tybalt (Michael York), as a way to defend himself against a superior swordsman. Of course, the crowd eats it up, and the scene is accompanied by a great deal of laughter by those gathered around. As a result, it hits that much harder when Tybalt stabs Mercutio in earnest, since the almost slapstick-y sword fight has suddenly turned deadly serious.

But consider what happens afterward. Tybalt, realizing what has happened, runs away with his men. But Mercutio’s friends interpret his stumbling as yet another jest, and continue laughing. The more he visibly suffers, the more they laugh at his perceived joke, while only Romeo begins to see the truth. It’s not until Mercutio struggles up a flight of stairs and screams, “a plague o’er both your houses!” that they realize what’s really happened.

In the end, this is probably the greatest triumph of Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet- that he’s able to find the emotional truth behind Shakespeare’s beloved romantic tragedy in a way that gives it immediacy. It’s the difference between a director who simply respects Shakespeare and one who loves him enough to do justice to his work. Romeo and Juliet isn’t simply a dutiful Shakespeare adaptation; it’s an involving and emotionally satisfying movie in its own right.

Screengrab Review: Paranoid Park

Peter Smith — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Review by Mike D'Angelo.

Taking a brief and very welcome break from memorial filmmaking — Columbine, Kurt Cobain, a forthcoming Harvey Milk biopic — Gus Van Sant achieves thrilling new heights of lyrical expressionism with Paranoid Park, his fractured adaptation of a young-adult novel by Blake Nelson. Frankly, I was so certain that I never wanted to see this particular director set foot on a high-school campus again that I contemplated a restraining order. But this brilliantly schizoid character study — structured as the letter-cum-journal entry of Alex, a skate punk with a guilty conscience (sensational newcomer Gabe Nevins, found via MySpace) — digs into the teenage mindset with a clarity and eloquence that Elephant, with its distracting (and, to my mind, obscene) echoes of real-world tragedy, couldn't possibly achieve. Ostensibly, the plot concerns Alex's involvement in the accidental death of a security guard. But since this act of involuntary manslaughter (briefly seen in gruesome detail) is wholly fictional, Van Sant and Nelson's appropriation of it as an overarching metaphor for the furtive, free-floating sense of shame that accompanies puberty feels bold and incisive rather than deeply disrespectful.

Meanwhile, Van Sant's formal dexterity just grows more and more astounding. He sometimes rivals Alain Resnais here with his conflation of editing and memory, skipping back and forth in time in a dissociative frenzy that has no use for conventional signposts or explanations. And even when Van Sant flirts with cliché, he does so in a way that's forbidding and strange: You've seen the scene where the distraught protagonist sublimates his/her grief in the shower a hundred times — but never like this, with the contrast cranked up to near-abstraction and the camera intently focused on the rivulets of water that flow from Alex's long hair as he stands silently, head bowed. I could have done with a bit less emphasis on Elliott Smith on the soundtrack, perhaps, but the film's other musical choices, ranging from Billy Swan's "I Can Help" to snatches of Nino Rota's score for Juliet of the Spirits, are magnificently contrapuntal. This is still very much a mood piece, but Van Sant, after two consecutive films centered on sacrificial lambs, has made an overdue and welcome return to recognizable human beings.