LGBTQ Film History Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley in René Clément's Plein Soleil 1960
1960Best.-Nr. 199601960. Highsmith Patricia. The Talented Mr. Ripley brought to the screen for the first time in René Clément's Plein Soleil Purple Noon 1960 with Alain Delon as Tom Ripley Maurice Ronet as Philippe Greenleaf and Marie Laforêt as Marge. Adapted from Highsmith's 1955 novel the film follows Ripley from New York to Italy where an assignment to persuade the wealthy Greenleaf to return home develops into impersonation and murder. Delon's performance became one of the defining early roles of his career while the film preserved the novel's preoccupation with envy imitation desire and unstable personal identity. Critics have repeatedly addressed the queer implications of Ripley's fixation on Greenleaf; Roger Ebert described a "buried level of homoerotic attraction" while later criticism has noted that Clément reduced some of the novel's more explicit homosexual implications while retaining ambiguity in Ripley's attachment to Philippe. Archive of eight pieces comprising four original black-and-white silver gelatin publicity photographs and four Japanese chirashi or theatrical advertising flyers associated with Plein Soleil and its Japanese exhibition. Measurements range from 5 x 7 inches to 8 x 10 inches. Three photographs carry the film title and actors' names in the lower white margins; another has a German-language article concerning the film printed on the verso. The photographs show Delon in his first major screen role as Ripley and belong to the promotional circulation surrounding a French-Italian production whose English-language title became Purple Noon. The accompanying Japanese flyers extend that history of circulation beyond the film's European production and English-language reception documenting its marketing to Japanese theater audiences. Clément's adaptation altered Highsmith's novel substantially including its ending and the handling of Ripley's sexuality. Highsmith's novel contains stronger homosexual suggestion while the film redirects some of Ripley's attention toward Marge without eliminating the charged relationship between Tom and Philippe; this difference has made Plein Soleil part of critical discussions of queer subtext censorship and adaptation in postwar cinema. Highsmith had already published The Price of Salt in 1952 later retitled Carol making sexuality and same-sex desire central to her broader literary history even though Ripley himself resists fixed categorization. All eight pieces are in very good condition. The combination of original publicity photographs and Japanese theatrical ephemera records both the first cinematic construction of Highsmith's Ripley and the international promotion of a film whose treatment of male desire has remained central to its critical reception. unknown
Max Rambod Inc. · Vereinigte Staaten385,00 $≈ 343,97 €
