The Talented Mr Ripley: A Screenplay - Softcover

Minghella, Anthony; Highsmith, Patricia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0413742008 ISBN 13: 9780413742001

Publisher: Methuen Drama, 2000

Synopsis

The screenplay of Anthony Minghella's new film based on the novel by Patricia Highsmith The complete screenplay of Anthony Minghella's adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr Ripley starring Gwyneth Paltrow, Matt Damon, Jude Law and Cate Blanchett. Tom Ripley, a small-time con man, arrives in Italy from New York in search of a wealthy young man named Dickie Greenleaf. He has been sent by the young man's wealthy father to bring Dickie back to America. But once in Italy, Ripley becomes so attracted to Greenleaf and his exotic lifestyle in the seaport village of Mongibello that Tom yearns to inhabit Dickie's life and falls tragically in love with him. Dickie's wealth, style and good looks are qualities that Tom begins to covet. The frightening consequences of this attraction and the moral choices raised by the crime of murder lie at the heart of Minghella's absorbing film. Set throughout Italy (Ischia, Palermo, Rome, Tuscany and Venice), Minghella's adaptation brings to life Highsmith's amoral tale of a criminal who gets away with murder. "The craft with which [Minghella] has expanded Patricia Highsmith's 1955 classic crime novel has made the film an even richer experience than the gleefully amoral original" (Scotsman)

About this title

About the Authors

Anthony Minghella, CBE was an English film director, playwright and screenwriter. Born on the Isle of Wight in 1984, he was Chairman of the Board of Governors at the British Film Institute between 2003 and 2007. His plays include Whale Music, Two Planks and a Passion, A Little Like Drowning (for which he won the Critics Award for Most Promising Playwright, 1984), Made in Bangkok (for which he won the Critics Award for Best New Play, 1986), Hang Up, Cigarettes and Chocolate, and Eyes Down Looking. He was an Oscar-winning director, famous for his adaptation of Michael Ondaatje's novel, The English Patient (1996). He died in 2008.

Patricia Highsmith was born in Fort Worth, Texas, in 1921. Her first novel, Strangers On A Train, was made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951. The Talented Mr Ripley, published in 1955, was awarded the Edgar Allan Poe Scroll by the Mystery Writers of America and introduced the fascinating anti-hero Tom Ripley, who was to appear in many of her later crime novels. Patricia Highsmith died in Locarno, Switzerland, in February 1995. Her last novel, Small g: A Summer Idyll, was published posthumously just over a month later.

Edition details

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0413742008
• ISBN 13: 9780413742001
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 176