Plein Soleil

Alain Delon stars in his debut leading role as Tom Ripley, a young American who is paid by the wealthy Greenleaf family to travel to Europe to persuade his friend, errant playboy Philip Greenleaf (Maurice Ronet), to return to the family home in San Francisco. When he gets there, Tom discovers that Philip has it all - including a beautiful fiancée, Marge (Marie Laforêt) - and begins to covet his luxurious lifestyle. Philip, initially amused by Tom's arrival, soon tires of him, and as Tom begins to find himself excluded from Philip's coterie, his envy takes a murderous turn. Based on the renowned novel ‘The Talented Mr Ripley’ by Patricia Highsmith, René Clément’s exquisite thriller is arguably the most colourful film noir ever made. Shot in the glorious sun of the Mediterranean, Clément’s film is an unflinching display of the criminal and sociopath mind, embodied to perfection by Alain Delon in a star-making turn. His steely eyes, intense stare and rigid demeanour harks to the great anti-heroes of film noir: cold, emotionless and deadly, yet intoxicating and enthralling. Marie Laforêt delivers a breakthrough debut performance, but it is the palpable tension between the sublime leading men, Ronet (Lift to the Scaffold) and Delon, that sticks in the mind; a dynamic Jacques Deray would exploit 10 years later in another sun-kissed classic thriller La Piscine. Indeed, the star of that film, Romy Schneider, also has a minor role in Plein Soleil. Beyond the fine casting, Clément’s film has become a deserved bona fide classic as all elements converge quite masterfully. His taut script and direction emphasise the suspense of Highsmith’s story to infuse the film with an unrelenting Hitchcockian chill. The beauty of the natural colours and the open spaces is given an overwhelming and claustrophobic feel through Henri Decae’s superlative photography. Finally, the overall effect is compounded by Fellini regular, Nina Rota’s spine-tingling score.