The Talented Mr. Ripley
Patricia Highsmith
A perfect mask that hides not a monster but a void.
PsychopathyTom is a small-time New York con man whom Dickie Greenleaf’s father sends to Italy to persuade his son to come home. There he kills Dickie, takes over his identity, also kills Freddie Miles and ends up rich thanks to a forged will, though left wondering whether he will ever be caught. Highsmith tells it from the inside, without guilt. It is the reading KRIMINIS gives him: the successful psychopath, Cleckley’s mask hiding not a monster but a void filled with someone else’s life.
Purple Noon
René Clément · Alain Delon
The cinema of its day needed to remind us that crime gets found out.
Deterrence TheoryIn the French version, Alain Delon’s Ripley covets Philippe Greenleaf’s luxury, takes over his identity and his money, and seduces his girlfriend, Marge. But the ending changes the book: Philippe’s body surfaces when the boat is hauled out of the water and the police set a trap. Highsmith saw that ending as a concession to public morality. It is deterrence theory on screen: what curbs crime most is not the severity of the penalty but the certainty of being caught, and the film makes sure the audience learns it.
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Anthony Minghella · Matt Damon
A young man with nothing, looking in at the life he craves.
Relative deprivationMinghella builds a Ripley who becomes obsessed with Dickie and his privileged life in Italy: a young man with no means, looking in from outside at a world he longs for. He is no longer a cold void; the crime grows out of comparing himself with what others have and he does not. That is why relative deprivation reads him well: it blames not poverty itself but the feeling that you lack something you deserve. The ending is bleaker than the book’s: sobbing, Tom strangles Peter, the person closest to him, to avoid being found out.
Ripley
Steven Zaillian · Andrew Scott
Killing takes a moment; hiding it is exhausting work.
Rational choice theoryThe Netflix series, eight episodes in black and white, returns to the Ripley closest to Highsmith’s: a small-time New York con man who, in Italy, kills and, above all, works. The camera lingers on every task: weighting Dickie’s body and sinking it at sea, hiding Freddie’s in his own car, cleaning up the blood, getting rid of the papers. It is rational choice seen from the inside: every step is a calculation of risks and rewards, and the suspense comes from the cost of each mistake. The crime is not an outburst but a job.