From 1955 to 1991, novelist Patricia Highsmith wrote “Ripliad,” a series of five novels starring what would become her most famous character, Tom Ripley. The utterly amoral con man is a suave, agreeable, and manipulative man devoid of any conscience. But what makes Ripley so astonishingly fascinating is that it is essentially Highsmith taking a stab at F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and just willing to show Gatsby towards amorality taken almost an extreme form—a man desiring to reach a station in life, fulfill their deep-seated ambition, and be willing to lie and even kill to get there. And perhaps that is why Highsmith’s first trilogy of novels has been adapted a total of five times on film and now as a Showtime-produced miniseries, streaming on Netflix. There is a strange attraction towards the character that allows his sociopathy to be ignored or even accepted as gospel.
One can surmise that because Highsmith explicitly writes Ripley as a man dreaming of being rich and intent on using every trick to achieve it, the adaptations themselves allow the viewers to be sucked into the beauty and “vacation porn” nature of the narrative. But because you are completely witnessing the events from the point of view of the sociopath (for the most part), you are rooting for him to get away and even watching in bemusement as Ripley tries to maintain a semblance of interest in his life once he achieves the wealth he so desired.
Caveat: –
- This would be a ranking of all the official adaptations featuring Ripley, directly adapting the novels and not necessarily being inspired by one of the films.
- This ranking would be based on the quality of the movies and not judging based on the quality of the Ripley interpretation because that would entail a completely separate list.
- Just for fun, a Ripley interpretation ranking is also added under each entry
Dishonorable and Honorable Mentions –
- Saltburn (Dir – Emerald Fennell) – Essentially Fennell’s homage to the first novel as well as the 1999 film “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” Fennell almost admirably doubles down on the overt sexuality discussions that the 1999 film dealt with subtly, while the books tiptoed around, referencing them. However, in the process of subverting (a trademark that Fennell had been complicit in overusing in her two-film old filmography), she manages to elicit sympathy for the elite and ultra-rich and even chooses to depict Oliver Quick’s true intentions as a form of earth-shattering twist within the narrative, which completely undermines not only Fennell’s film as a whole but also displays a fundamental misunderstanding of Highsmith’s source materials.
- Naan (Dir—Jeeva Shankar)—Shankar’s 2012 Tamil crime thriller, which starred composer Vijay Antony in his acting debut, is a plotty and twisty crime thriller that is very loosely adapted from the 1999 film “The Talented Mr. Ripley” rather than a direct interpretation of any of the source material. This is the primary reason it remains in the honorable mentions category.
Without further ado, and with most of the honorable (and dishonorable) mentions out of the way, let us jump into the Ripley adaptations and rank them –
6. Ripley Under Ground (2005)
The only official adaptation of Highsmith’s second novel of the same name, Spottiswoode’s adaptation is also the only one set during the modern era. It follows Tom Ripley as a young, 20-something actor. When one of his friends, a young upstart artist, gets killed in an accident, the rest of the group of friends, under Ripley’s urging, hatch a scheme to continue making paintings under their friend’s name, and as is expected, the plan starts to fall apart.
Taking into account how much the novel reads like a farcical take on the rich and elite art scene, “Ripley Under Ground” is a fun movie, completely leaning into the flighty and campy nature of the source material. For all Ripley adaptations, the central casting and the aesthetics are downright essential. Barry Pepper as Tom Ripley is the most 2005 version of a charming scumbag with immorality in his veins, but he lacks any of the sociopathies.
The moral, emotional complexities, and class commentary of all the Ripley adaptations are missing here. This is sometimes a black comedy veering too far into goofy and slapstick territory. The acting, too, feels a product of its time, with a visual palette resembling a telefilm. It is in sharp contrast to the supporting cast of Alan Cumming, Tom Wilkinson, and Willem Dafoe, who feel overqualified for the movie they find themselves in.
5. Ripley’s Game (2002)
The second adaptation of Highsmith’s novel of the same name, “Ripley’s Game,” follows Tom Ripley, now living happily with his girlfriend at a villa with Veneto. A visit from an old associate of the Berlin underworld pulls Ripley back into a life of crime when he is asked to kill a rival. Ripley, with pettiness complementing his knowledge of human nature, takes this chance to draw an innocent picture framer, Jonathan Trevanny, into this life of crime, exploiting his impending death due to a rare sickness. But what if Ripley starts developing a conscience as much as he could conceive one?
The one case where the performance elevates almost all of the flaws of the material is simply because Malkovich’s tics and his soft delivery of dialogue imbued with heavy snark embodies a near-perfect encapsulation of Tom Ripley as had been imagined by Highsmith. Malkovich is a master at flipping from jocular to sarcastic, from boorish to murderous in a dime. His sociopathy is only matched by his ease at resorting to murder and his acknowledgment of the strangeness of his amorality. It gives the movie a spark while Cavani strips it down and tries to make an engaging espionage thriller resembling a ’60s Cold War-era film.
The flaw is in the supporting cast, especially in Dougray Scott’s depiction of Trevanny. The man’s vulnerability and fish-out-of-water depiction only serve a bland aftertaste. More importantly, there is a lack of chemistry between him and Ripley. Cavani’s wish to maintain a semblance of morality within Trevanny instead of having Ripley’s association corrupt him from the inside out blunts the teeth of the narrative itself. The flaw is compounded by the third act going at least 10 minutes too long, adding an unnecessary and unimaginatively designed shootout sequence that only feels like an epilogue added as an afterthought.
4. Purple Noon (1960)
The first adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955), Clement’s 1960 film Plein Soleil (Purple Noon), follows Ripley as we find him already fast friends with Philip Greenleaf and his fiance Marge. But when Greenleaf’s cruelty, hearkening to his extremely privileged perspective, hits Tom a bit too close to home, Ripley kills him, leading to a chain of events where Ripley manipulates and dodges Greenleaf’s family and the authorities as he tries to take over Greenleaf’s identity and his life.
Ripley as a character, as well as a series of novels being adapted, depend very much on the balancing act between the aesthetics—the travelogue nature of the film with its lush cinematography (Clement’s editing recalls the style of the French New Wave)—and the insidious dynamics between three attractive people, and of course, the effervescent beauty of one Alain Delon. Delon’s handsomeness adds to the mystique, giving the movie an added layer of shielding from some of the choices made in the screenplay while adapting Highsmith’s source material.
The film’s ending is also a studio-mandated one, ensuring that Ripley gets caught for a mistake that this process-oriented, carefully calibrated interpretation could never have made. Perhaps Delon is too handsome for Ripley, but he also manages to bring out spurts of uncertainty and moments of triumph in brief flashes over his Dorian Gray-like visage. But “Purple Noon” is also fascinating precisely because of how much Hitchcockian influence the mischievousness disguising the perversity of evil feels, almost lifted from Highsmith. However, Clement is also adapting an exclusively American source material and stripping the nuances of the class divide as well as excising its queer coding, making it a simple French noir, and that’s where it falters.
3. The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)
Perhaps the most well-known adaptation of “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” as well as one of the most celebrated, Anthony Minghella’s film follows Tom Ripley (Matt Damon), a calculating young man who is hired by a wealthy US shipbuilder to bring back his wayward playboy son Dickie Greenleaf (Jude Law). Ripley slowly starts to ingratiate himself into the lives of Dickie and his girlfriend Marge (Gwyneth Paltrow), but jealousy, as well as desire, urges Ripley to be drawn into a game of duplicity, lies, and murder.
Minghella’s adaptation of Highsmith’s novel gets the aesthetic essentialness of “Purple Noon” down pat. Jude Law’s almost incandescent presence as Dickie Greenleaf emphasizes and codifies Ripley’s sexuality. Minghella doubles down on homoeroticism, but the process of making Ripley vulnerable and accessible leads to a loss of the cold, psychopathic, amoral edge of the character. In the truest sense of the word, Minghella manages to craft a Hitchockian travelogue, but Ripley here is on a journey to acknowledge his sociopathy, the ease of murder, and finally, the compulsiveness of lying as an essential element of running a con.
Damon’s portrayal captures the jilted lover, the emotionally wrought version of Ripley. It is a fantastic performance, but Ripley’s interpretation depends on the version you see first, and Damon’s portrayal is one of the more divergent ones for someone who has seen the Delon version. But “The Talented Mr. Ripley” as a movie is excellent on almost every other front, especially in the supporting cast. This is a stupendous ensemble, bit roles essayed by actors who are leads in their own right and producing memorable performances out of essentially nothing roles (Philip Seymour Hoffman as Freddie Miles).
2. Ripley (2024)
The latest adaptation is again one of the adaptations of the novel “The Talented Mr. Ripley.” Notwithstanding the question as to whether the first book required another adaptation, the question also arises as to whether it could escape the shadow of the 1999 film adaptation. And while such a high ranking could scream recency bias, the reasoning is far simpler—the miniseries is just that good.
The ideal representation of a Ripley adaptation would be the overall faithfulness to the tonality and amorality of the Ripley novels, with the interpretation of Ripley resembling much more of Alain Delon. It is impossible to evoke Delon’s sculpted beauty, but Steven Zaillian does the next best thing. Zaillian takes one of the best cinematographers in the business, Robert Elswit (There Will Be Blood), and uses him to craft vistas, juxtaposing the stoniness and grandeur of the architecture with the splendorous scenery. But Elswit shoots the show in stark black and white, with chiaroscuro perfectly calibrated.
The beauty of every frame and every shot bestows a level of sinister, mysterious foreboding that is in line with this interpretation of Ripley. Andrew Scott plays Ripley with all the intricacy of a perfectly calibrated clock. An opportunistic, charismatic psychopath whose smile doesn’t reach up to his eyes and whose tonality can shift between genial and terse within a dime. But there is also narcissism there, with Ripley indirectly praising himself in letters pretending to be Greenleaf.
Connecting to the character is only possible through the machinations of the plot; Hitchcockian suspense allows you to wonder whether Ripley’s luck will finally run out. Process-oriented storytelling allows tension to be ratcheted up, be it in the clean-up of the crime scenes or in the investigation itself. The miniseries format allows for a more exhaustive exploration. Still, Scott’s portrayal allows you to take into stride some of the more baffling choices, mostly the characters of Dickie Greenleaf and Freddie Miles.
The choices exhibited by Zaillian in the depiction of these performances range from curiously bland to strangely baffling. The miniseries is an intricately made, precisely plotted piece of storytelling that could be thought of as an art piece because of the distance the show maintains between the main character and the viewer. At the very least, that elicits admiration.
1. The American Friend (1977)
The first adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s “Ripley’s Game,” with plot elements of “Ripley Under Ground,” also borrowed to provide the added context in the film “The American Friend” by Wim Wenders, is a curious beast in its own right. The Ripley performance by Dennis Hopper is so ingrained in Hopper’s tics and his overall personality that the divergence is almost stark. This list, however, is a ranking of the best adaptations, judging the cinematic quality rather than the iteration of Ripley in the adaptation, and from that perspective, “The American Friend” is perhaps a couple of inches short of an art-house noir masterpiece.
Wenders makes the plot almost indiscernible, letting the film luxuriate in the architecture and the colors. The juxtaposition of largesse and desolation that is emblematic of the German New Wave, bright primary colors clashing and intermingling with the sterility and griminess of modernity, is similar to the dilemma faced by Jonathan Zimmerman. He is the unwitting pawn in a game within the underworld, exploited by his terminal illness and promise of an extension of life to take up the job of a contract killer only because of a perceived slight.
Wenders cleverly put Ripley out of our sight, putting Zimmerman, played with soulful charisma by Bruno Ganz, as the moral center. Through Ganz, we are invited to witness the corruption of Zimmerman as evil touches him, pulling him deeper into the eye of the storm by Ripley himself. One can argue that Hopper’s portrayal of Ripley is less of a smooth, suave psychopath and more of a playful, coked-up fiend with a mischievous streak. But as a character so intertwined with evil and yet open enough to invite chaos into well-laid plans purely for his interests, Hopper’s portrayal of Ripley is completely on point.
Wenders is content to skip over plot beats in favor of style and ambient score, intent on homaging noir and Americana in all their auditory and visual splendor. He is, however, intent on keeping the nationality intact, as evidenced by the naturalistic dialogues exchanged by toggling between three languages according to the characters’ convenience. The depiction of the essentialness of nationality is as important as its “corruption.” Perhaps the “American” in the title is more of a symbol of American influence exerting itself within the German art form.
