Perhaps best known for her first novel, Strangers on a Train (1950), and the 1951 Alfred Hitchcock film version, Patricia Highsmith (1921-1995) created con artist and murderer Tom Ripley with her “Ripliad”: The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955), Ripley Under Ground (1970), Ripley’s Game (1974), The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980), and Ripley Under Water (1991). The first was adapted by René Clément with Alain Delon as Plein Soleil (Full Sun, aka Purple Noon) in 1960, by Anthony Minghella with Matt Damon in 1999 (*), and by Steven Zaillian with Andrew Scott as a 2024 miniseries, Ripley. Yet that was not the last of Ripley on screen, as the next two novels generated a total of three adaptations.

   Ripley’s Game was filmed by Wim Wenders with Dennis Hopper as Der Amerikanische Freund (The American Friend; 1977), and by Liliana Cavani with John Malkovich under its original title in 2002. But The American Friend also incorporated plot elements from Ripley Under Ground, filmed by Roger Spottiswoode with Barry Pepper in 2005, from a script by William Blake Herron and Donald Westlake. Herron contributed to The Bourne Identity (2002), while Westlake (aka Richard Stark, et alia) earned an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America—one of three, as well as being named a Grand Master—and an Oscar nomination for The Grifters (1990), based on the 1963 Jim Thompson book.

   Highsmith’s Ripley Under Ground finds Tom living near Paris in Villeperce-sur-Seine in Belle Ombre, the house a wedding gift from his father-in-law, millionaire pharmaceutical manufacturer Jacques Plisson; Heloise is vacationing in Greece. He supplements Dickie Greenleaf’s inheritance with 10% of Derwatt Ltd., e.g., Perugia’s Derwatt School of Art, Derwatt-branded art supplies, and the sale at Bond Street’s Buckmaster Gallery of works by the reclusive artist, who lives in a tiny Mexican village. These are forged by Bernard Tufts, a scheme Tom hatched (after Philip Derwatt vanished in Greece) with the apparent suicide’s pals, freelance journalist Edmund Banbury and photographer Jeffrey Constant.

   American collector Thomas Murchison is headed to the gallery, rightly convinced that his Derwatt is fake, so Tom yet again turns to imposture, posing as Derwatt to “authenticate” The Clock. Despite his assurances, Murchison is convinced that Derwatt misremembered painting it and is being forged; sans disguise, Tom contrives an encounter, alarmed to see him meeting with Bernard, who warns him not to buy any more. Invited to Belle Ombre, Murchison admires Derwatt’s The Red Chairs, correctly pegs Man in Chair as bogus, and insists on consulting the Tate Gallery’s Riemer, but on a visit to the wine cellar, he intuits that Tom is in on it and is abruptly killed, hit on the head with a bottle and a coal scuttle…

   More houseguests follow in quick succession, Tom burying the body in the woods behind the house in between Count Eduardo Bertolozzi, who unwittingly carries in his toothpaste a microfilm that Tom intercepts and mails to Paris, on behalf of fence Reeves Minot, and Christopher Greenleaf, Dickie’s cousin. Then the distraught Bernard appears, planning to confess his forgeries, but with the police making inquiries, he helps Tom dig up the body, dumping it into the river; Detective-Inspector Webster from London seems satisfied with their answers. Chris departs, and Heloise returns briefly, then heads to her parents’ after finding a dummy of the penitent Bernard, who has hanged himself in effigy, in the cellar.

   The title is literalized as Tom, knocked out by Bernard and buried in Murchison’s former grave, frees himself; since being believed dead might be advantageous, he heads to Paris, joined by Heloise, and adopts a series of aliases (Daniel Stevens, William Tenyck, Robert Fiedler Mackay). Calling in a favor from Reeves for a new passport, he seeks Bernard in Greece to no avail, then returns to London to be seen as Derwatt, considered missing, and runs into Bernard’s ex-girlfriend, Cynthia Gradnor, who refuses to see him. Spotting him at last in Salzburg, Tom plays cat and mouse with Bernard, who finally leaps to his death from a cliff in the woods outside of town, and burns his body to fake Derwatt’s “suicide.”

   The film opens as Tom, in arrears, placates his landlady (Dinah Stabb) by returning her “missing” cat, which he had abducted, then is busted by Dean Bentliffe (Simon Callow) just before going on stage in Shakespeare’s Richard III for falsifying his credentials and trust fund. Rifling a purse in an open car, he sees Heloise (Jacinda Barrett) asleep in the back and, concerned for her safety, awakens her, enraging her companion, Nigel (Peter Serafinowicz). Like Tom, she is en route to a gallery opening by Jeff (Alan Cumming) for “new sensation” Derwatt (Douglas Henshall), although Cynthia (Claire Forlani) tells Tom that she’s cheated on Derwatt, fed up with his sexual oddities and other obsessions.

   Jeff says he’s not sure which makes Bernard Sayles (Ian Hart, who played Ripley in the 2009 BBC Radio Four Ripliad adaptations) more jealous, Derwatt’s eclipsing his artistic career or bedding his ex. At a celebration afterward, Cynthia shocks Derwatt by refusing a proposal, and the quintet follows as he drives off distraught, dying in a crash; exhausted from studying for finals, Heloise has dozed off again while they stash him in Jeff’s meat freezer, conspiring to keep his work—with its attendant income—alive. Neil Murchison (Willem Dafoe), a patron of Dayton’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Derwatt’s first collector, learns that Jeff’s show is sold out, and gives him a big check for his next work.

   The deal sweetened with Cynthia’s renewed favors, and a promise of his own exhibition, Bernard is persuaded to complete the unfinished Derwatts with a four-way split, and all is going well until she says she’s breaking it off again, and Murchison drops his bombshell. Meanwhile, on Paris in business, Tom visits Heloise, only to learn that she is the daughter of wealthy Antoine Plisson (François Marthouret), who warns her of Tom’s shady past at his lavish estate, Belle Ombre, but this just drives her into his bed even faster. He forges a letter from Derwatt, authenticating the painting; after an anonymous call to Murchison, saying he should ask to see Derwatt, Bernard is barely stopped from immolating himself.

   With Murchison threatening to go to the police, a panicked Jeff gives him Belle Ombre as Derwatt’s location, so Tom draws on his thespian skills, an addition by the scenarists that would make his impersonation more plausible, to defend the aptly titled Faust’s Bargain. Yet here, Murchison sees through him immediately, and is instead killed accidentally in a scuffle; black humor ensues as Tom must bathe Plisson’s blood-stained white dogs before he and Heloise return. He tells John Webster (Tom Wilkinson) that Murchison saw only him and was totally reassured, then—out of earshot—has Jeff arrange a press conference so Derwatt can explain, but before Webster can leave, Bernard arrives and is recognized.

   As they talk, one of the dogs appears with Murchison’s toupée, which Heloise discards; on a rainy night, when Bernard speaks of absolution, Tom shows him the grave, arguing that he is responsible, but is attacked and left for dead. By the time Bernard fesses up to Webster, Tom has revived and relocated the body, then departs for London with Heloise, winding up on the same Eurostar train as Bernard and Webster, who is alerted by Plisson, and Tom evades his search via a lavatory tryst with Heloise. Bernard has pledged to lead Webster to Derwatt’s corpse, absent the other two, yet his search for Jeff’s property gives Tom time to put it in his trunk as Heloise, who seems increasingly clueless, sits in the car.

   Although held at gunpoint by Bernard as he leaves the gallery, aware that Webster is onto him, Tom crashes the car, places Derwatt at the wheel, ignites it, and pulls Bernard out at the last minute, telling Webster that he’d come unhinged en route to the press conference. On Tom’s wedding day, Webster shows him a painting depicting Murchison sans toupée, convincing him Bernard really had seen the body, and appearing to explain Tom’s sudden interest in gardening. Yet Heloise, not so stupid after all, not only has relocated the body yet again but also, as they drive away for their honeymoon—with Murchison in the trunk for disposal—proposes that they eliminate her hateful father, leaving Belle Ombre to her.

   Ripley’s Game opens as Tom tells Reeves, “There’s no such thing as a perfect murder. That’s just a parlour game, trying to dream one up,” while differentiating that from an unsolved murder. Visiting from Hamburg, he asks Tom to “suggest someone to do one or perhaps two ‘simple murders’ and perhaps one theft, also safe and simple,” in order to protect the gambling world from Italian sharks, including a Mafia button man, and let the police, thus alerted, handle the rest. Tom recalls Jonathan Trevanny, an English picture framer in Fontainebleau with a French wife, Simone; a small son, Georges; and a severe case of myeloid leukemia, leaving him in need of Minot’s $96,000, with nothing to lose.

   A letter from a friend, Alan McNear, says he’s heard Jon is getting worse, yet Dr. Perrier assures him this is not so, and that even if it were, he would never divulge that to anyone; Alan writes again, identifying his source as Pierre Gauthier, who runs an art supply shop, and had brought Tom to Simone’s birthday party. Pierre, in turn, says he heard it from an unspecified customer who noted he wasn’t sure, i.e., Tom. He “started the…game out of curiosity, and because Trevanny had once sneered at him—and because Tom wanted to see if his own wild shot would find its mark, and make [him]…uneasy for a time. Then Reeves could offer his bait, hammering the point…that [Jon] was soon to die anyway.”

   Working on a portrait of Heloise, Tom buys a tube of zinc white from Gauthier; he says he did not identify Tom, who claims he was told at the party but does not recall the man’s name. Urged by Tom to keep him out of it, Reeves approaches Jon, explaining that he wants someone with no criminal connections, and is turned down as Perrier retests Jon, admitting that the results are less favorable. Invited to Hamburg, Jon visits Dr. Heinrich Wentzel, although suspicious of Reeves’s med-student “interpreter,” Rudolf, and listens to the plan, in which tax-driver Fritz will identify the target, Salvatore Bianca, aboard the U-Bahn (subway), and Jon will shoot him amidst the crowd as he gets off at Steinstrasse.

   Wentzel’s report is worse, so Jon, impenitent over a Mafioso, pulls the first job—which Reeves hopes will start a war between the Di Stefano (Bianca’s) and Genotti families—and tells Simone he may have to return, expenses paid, to try some new drugs. In Paris, Reeves asks Jon to garrotte Vito Marcangelo, a Genotti capo in Munich, in “retaliation” on the Mozart Express, or perhaps push him out the door, if the opportunity arises, again refused at first. With partial payment put into a Swiss bank account, Jon goes to Munich, where Reeves makes him an appointment with Dr. Max Schroeder, and agrees at least to ride the train, provided he has the less desirable option of a gun, and see what eventuates.

   Ready to shoot himself after the capo, but afraid Simone will refuse the money if aware how he earned it, Jon is astonished when Tom—whom Reeves denied knowing, and vice versa—suddenly appears, offering to help. “The Mafiosi made Tom feel almost virtuous by comparison,” and he garrottes Marcangelo in the W.C., though they must subdue one of his bodyguards and toss him out the door as well, yet Turoli survives, albeit in a coma, and may be able to i.d. them. Back in Paris, Tom admits that he falsified Jon’s condition, but relieves him of the unused gun, promising that he desires none of the money, wants to protect Jon, and is potentially just as much in his power as Jon is in his should either talk.

   Turoli (his first name given variously as Filippo or Vincent, as Heloise’s maiden name is now inexplicably Plissot) revives, and Tom fears he has compared notes with his partner, then Reeves’s flat is bombed. At a concert, the Trevannys bump into Gauthier, who beats feet when he sees Tom; Jon later warns Ripley that Simone, already suspicious of his new income, noticed and is connecting the dots—especially when a hit-and-run kills Gauthier. Relocated to Amsterdam, Reeves reports Turoli’s death and Fritz’s beating, and Tom gets two more calls, one an unnerving “wrong number,” and the other from Jon to arrange for a meet, seeking advice now that Simone has seen his Swiss bankbook, worsening things.

   Tom leaves Jon with the Italian gun to keep in his shop and has both a Luger acquired via Reeves and a rifle, but sends Heloise and Mme. Annette away for safety, then learns from Minot of another “near thing.” Simone disbelieves the story suggested by Tom, that Jon holds the stakes for a macabre bet between doctors regarding his fate, then Tom asks him to come armed to Belle Ombre to hold the fort, denying his presence when Simone calls. Sure enough, making fast work of an intruder, they see it is the second bodyguard, Angy, then get the drop on Lippo, reports of his death exaggerated; he is “persuaded” to call his boss, Luigi, to report that Tom was not the man they sought, and they are being followed.

   Simone arrives as Tom is garrotting him and, seeing the bodies, reluctantly returns home while they drive the pair far away and burn them in their Citroën, with Jon following in Tom’s Renault. The effort weakens him, so Tom takes him in for a transfusion, alerting an irate Simone, who is unmoved when he says Jon was just helping to defend him from vengeful Mafiosi after he took the law into his own hands, insisting that Gauthier’s death was accidental. She is planning to leave Jon when Reeves is tortured into giving him up, and although Tom kills two Mafiosi who invade the Trevanny home with a hammer, Jon is shot by another from their car; Tom is convinced that Jon shielded him from the bullet.

   The American Friend features notable noir filmmakers Samuel Fuller, seen in Wenders’s The State of Things (1982) and The End of Violence (1997), as a gangster known only as “the American,” and Nicholas Ray as Derwatt, in this case having faked his own death to drive up prices. While dying of cancer, Ray recorded his own last days in Lightning Over Water (1980), which he wrote and directed with Wenders, thrice nominated for the Best Documentary Feature Oscar. Frequent collaborator Robby Müller shot his Paris, Texas (1984), and the script by Wenders, who also produced, eliminates the peripheral Heloise, with Hopper’s existentialist Ripley a marked contrast to the suave Delon in Purple Noon.

   Highsmith had offered Wenders the novel’s unpublished manuscript upon learning of his disappointment that the rights to The Cry of the Owl (1962) and The Tremor of Forgery (1969) had already been sold; she initially disliked Hopper’s interpretation, then praised the film after her second viewing, saying that it captured Ripley’s essence. The American Friend retains its international milieu, with dialogue in character-appropriate English and German and location shooting in Germany, France, and the U.S. It is in New York City, where they chat over the West Side Highway, that Ripley visits “Pogash” (Derwatt), and in a nice metacinematic twist, Ray had directed Hopper in Rebel Without a Cause (1955).

   Title notwithstanding, Ripley’s Game is as much Jonathan’s story, and Wenders elicited a performance by Bruno Ganz equally nuanced as his Jonathan Harker in Werner Herzog’s superb Nosferatu—Phantom der Nacht (Nosferatu—Phantom of the Night, aka Nosferatu the Vampyre; 1979). Ganz starred as the unseen angel Damiel in Wenders’s Der Himmel über Berlin (The Sky over Berlin, aka Wings of Desire; 1987) and its follow-up, In weiter Ferne, so nah! (Faraway, So Close!; 1993), and earned multiple international awards for his portrayal of Adolf Hitler in Der Untergang (Downfall, 2004). Here, Ganz is Jonathan Zimmermann, with Lisa Kreuzer, herself then married to Wenders, as his wife, Marianne.

   In his DVD audio commentary with Hopper—recommended to him by John Cassavetes when declining the role—Wenders noted, “I’m not good in depicting bad characters,” so he cast several fellow directors as criminals, e.g., Hopper, Gérard Blain (as Raoul Minot), Peter Lilienthal (Marcangelo), Daniel Schmid (Bianca’s analog, Igraham). Also on board the train are Lippo (Axel Schiessler); the American; his henchman, Angie (Hopper’s own assistant, Satya De La Manitou); his female companion, Mona (Rosemarie Heinikel); and a man with a dog (Heinrich Marmann, a hatmaker whose shop was converted into Jon’s). Rodolphe (Lou Castel), who fingers Igraham for Jon, is a composite of Fritz and Rudolf.

   At an auction in Hamburg, with Ripley’s confederate pushing up the price, Allan Winter (David Blue) buys a Derwatt despite his friend Jon, a former art restorer, saying that he is “doubtful” of the painting, which uses a different blue. To help support their son, Daniel (Andreas Dedecke), Marianne works at the auction house, and her boss, Gantner (Rudolf Schündler), privately informs Ripley about Jon’s condition; a deleted scene confirms her suspicions that “Allan’s” telegram was forged. When Gantner introduces Ripley—with whom he is apparently in collusion—to Allan and Jon, the latter makes his literally fatal snub by refusing to shake Ripley’s hand and coldly saying simply, “I’ve heard of you.”

   The narratives largely coincide as Jon, doubting Dr. Gabriel (Heinz Joachim Klein), goes to Paris to get a second opinion (with Minot falsifying the results) and kill Igraham, until an ending that conflates Highsmith’s. Angie dies outside Ripley’s house, while waiting in an ambulance—a Mercedes later bought by Hopper—are the American, whom he and Jon pursue and shoot; a bandaged figure, presumably Lippo, killed by the captive Minot as he escapes; and Mona, who then decamps. On arrival, Marianne agrees to follow the ambulance with Jon in his red VW Beetle, but as he leaves Ripley stranded after torching the bodies, Jon succumbs to his exertions en route back to Hamburg, dying at the wheel.

   Best known for Il portiere di Notte (The Night Porter, 1974), Cavani co-scripted Ripley’s Game—scored by the great Ennio Morricone—with Charles McKeown, long associated with various members of Monty Python on both sides of the camera. It opens in Berlin, where Ripley learns that Reeves (Ray Winstone) has tried to cheat him, dissolving their art-scam partnership after he takes both forgeries and payment from the customer, killing his bodyguard, Terry (Uwe Mansshardt). Three years later, in Italy, Jonathan (Dougray Scott) and Sarah (Lena Headey) Trevanny invite Ripley and his wife for drinks; Louisa Harari (Chiara Caselli), a harpsichordist, is preparing for a concert, so Tom attends alone.

   A drunken Jon is conspicuously rude to Tom (“Too much money and no taste”), backing down when asked what people have heard, and at home Tom finds Reeves, who has three clubs and a restaurant in Berlin with “competitors that need deregulating.” Tom declines, discussing the job openly with Louisa, who tells him about Jon’s illness; soon, as Holmes would say, the game’s afoot, with Reeves posing as headhunter “Peter Wester.” Noting as he walks by how Sarah’s boss, a shoe shop owner (Emidio Lavella)—as in the novel—ogles her, Jon is surprised by knowledge of his son, Matthew (Sam Blitz), and condition, but he turns down $50,000, which Tom tells Reeves to double, offering to put up the rest.

   Told by Dr. Wentzel (Nikolaus Deutsch) in Berlin that his “situation…remains grave,” Jon shoots Russian mobster Leopold Belinsky (Wilfried Zander) on his weekly visit to the insect room at the zoo. Reeves then warns him that his family may be in danger if he doesn’t “tidy things up” by using a garrotte—Belinsky’s signature—to strangle his chief rival, Ukrainian mob boss Guleghin (Yurij Rosstalnyj), in apparent reprisal on the Berlin to Dusseldorf Express, starting “a nice little war.” Again, Tom appears to take the point, and they kill both bodyguards, although Jon has to shoot Gregory (Ronnie Paul) to save Tom, who assures him, “The world is not a poorer place because those people are dead.”

   Reeves escapes an attack on his home (unlike his male bedmate), Tom sends Louisa and cook Maria (Evelina Meghnagi) out of danger, and Jon learns that Gregory has survived, ignoring an order to stay clear and promising to discuss their declining relationship with Sarah upon his return. Following the siege chez Tom, whose defenses include man traps, they put the gangsters’ bodies in their car for disposal and find Reeves dead in the trunk. Dropping off Jon with his final payment, Tom sees a suspicious car parked in the bushes, bursts in to kill the hoods holding Sarah hostage—again shielded by Jon at the cost of his life—and arrives in the nick of time for the start of Louisa’s concert at Teatro Olimpico…

   Where Cavani differs from Wenders is less in incident than in attitude, e.g., Jon’s overt initial hostility and maudlin outburst after the train killings, Tom’s rift with Reeves and transparency with Louisa. Winstone is the antithesis of the smooth Blain’s Minot, a total pig who splatters egg yolk on Tom’s furniture out of spite, and there is a greater focus on Ripley, with the decidedly different interpretation by Malkovich, a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominee for Places in the Heart (1984) and In the Line of Fire (1993); he’s a yoga practitioner, ardent lover, chef, and gardener. “I’m a gifted improviser….I don’t worry about being caught because I don’t believe anyone is watching,” he explains to Jonathan.

*  Interested parties may read my take on The Talented Mr. Ripley and the two feature-film versions here: https:/bradleyonfilm.wordpress.com/2017/11/11/talent-show/ Ripley’s final adventures will be the subject of a future post here on this blog.

Edition cited:

Ripley Under Ground, Ripley’s Game in The Mysterious Mr. Ripley: Penguin (1985)

Online sources: