It's mathematical:
change a rhythm, im-
mediately you have
an emotion.
Delon surprised me, last evening,
as I studied him in Plein soleil,
René Clément's 1960 adaptation of
Highsmith's Ripley story. This is
an entertainment in the moral way
Graham Greene used the term, on a
resourcefully adroit projection of
character to suit a change in cir-
cumstance. Delon carries it all by
mastery of his character's default
persona, an ambitious cad, angling
even more knowingly than Clift in
A Place in the Sun, for entitlement
to the best. I had respected Delon
in movies for Visconti (Il Gatto-
pardo) and for Melville (Samouraï),
directors who "handled" him elo-
quently. Now, on seeing Clément do
the same, I gained considerable re-
gard for Delon's capacity to change
a rhythm on a dime, as the script
requires him to do, but without the
frisson that Rossellini so shrewdly
foretold. We must ask, why not? We
had been warned, is all.
Plein Soleil/Purple Noon is a genre
tale of high cool, photographed a-
mazingly well by Henri Decaë, who
had just shot The 400 Blows with
François Truffaut, in the previous
year, and here had, apart from the
night sky of Naples and the Excelsi-
or in Rome, the hunger for roast
chicken to conserve. There are mer-
rily stylish narrative tropes and
directorial touches throughout - a
dancing hand of a dead man in thin
air, prefiguring that of another,
later on - including the insight
of using the screen to embrace its
hero's narcissism, becoming both
witness and player, a mirror shat-
tered by arhythmic changes in ex-
pression, shards of mania and fear
in unbalanced alternation, one ex-
pressive countenance hauling the
narrative's descent, down to the
improvised, post-mortem cigarette.
Supposing Alain Delon had been an
actor assessed for his looks, we'd
have deceived ourselves without Vis-
conti, Melville, and Clément. Who
directs whom, in such partnership?
Among the livelier of this movie's
lingering sparks of craftsmanship,
this one is the slowest to go out.
And Alain became Ripley more and
more, following everything that
was said to him to the letter.
He had an exceptional ability to
concentrate, a surprisingly fine
ear .. Faced with the truth I was
was seeking, I always had Delon,
ready to take on every impossibil-
ity of the action, for it is im-
possibility that makes the drama
move forward, of course.
René Clément to
L'avant-scène, 1981©
René Clément
director
Plein soleil
Purple Noon
Patricia Highsmith
book
René Clément and
Paul Gégauff
screenplay
Henri Decaë
director of photography
Nino Rota
music
Paris Film Production, 1960
Criterion Collection, 2012©
i, ii Alternate Mercedes
iii - v Alain Delon
Plein soleil
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