Long before Andrew Scott & Matt Damon, Alain Delon gave us a deeply homoerotic ‘Talented Mr. Ripley’
passed away over the weekend at the age of 88.An influential figure of ’60s French cinema, Delon is perhaps best remembered for weaponizing his striking beauty to play alluring yet cold and dangerous characters in crime thrillers like Le Samouraï and Purple Noon.While his legacy is a fraught one, littered with appalling behavior (the “Personal Life” section of his Wikipedia is pretty harrowing, and this tweet sums it all up nicely), it’s the latter film in particular that has made him something of a timeless emblem of cinematic homoeroticism—even if the man himself is the furthest thing from a queer icon.Subscribe to our newsletter for your front-row seat to all things entertainment with a sprinkle of everything else queer.For those unfamiliar, 1960’s Purple Noon—or Plein Soleil in French—is director René Clément’s adaptation of a little novel you may have heard of called The Talented Mr.
Ripley, from author Patricia Highsmith.That’s right! Decades before Andrew Scott and Matt Damon, Alain Delon was one the first to play the literary sociopath Tom Ripley on the screen (only second to American actor Keefe Brasselle in a 1956 episode of the CBS anthology Studio One).
And the role is what made him a star.You likely know the story by now: Amateur con man Ripley heads off to coastal Italy on a job to convince wealthy heir Philippe Greenleaf (Maurice Ronet) to return home at the request of his father.
But, enamored with the playboy’s luxurious life, Ripley hatches a sinister plan to assume his “friend’s” identity, and the body count quickly rises.With his leading role in the buzzy new adaptation of ‘The Talented Mr.
