Patricia Highsmith, her novels and some movies derived from them, by Geoff Gardner

 

                             Alain Delon in "Plain Soleil"  

                             released in Australia as "Full Sun"



In May 2014 when Geoff  Gardner was just starting Film Alert 101 he posted this article about the work of Patricia Highsmith. Here's the first paragraph of that Blog:


Wednesday, 12 November 2014

Highsmith's Final Stages

Back in the year 2000, when the remake of The Talented Mr Ripley (Anthony Minghella, UK, 2000) came out, I wrote a piece for Senses of Cinema (here) which began: In 1976 I met Patricia Highsmith at her house in Moret, a tiny village near Fontainebleau. The encounter did not last very long, perhaps three quarters of an hour, and did not lead to any enduring correspondence. Highsmith’s distraction at the presence of this Australian enthusiast was not allowed to last. I missed the local train back, walked all the way to Fontainebleau and allowed a couple of things to stick in the memory which I will refer to later. Let me start at the beginning.


I'm not going to copy the whole piece here, you can easily access it via this link:


https://filmalert101.blogspot.com/2014/11/highsmiths-final-stages.html


I must confess that I have not read any of her novels and only know of her through films derived from them, e.g., "Strangers on a Train", "Full Sun" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley". Geoff's piece goes into all this and more so I really don't need to add anything about them here, except to say I loved all of these three films for different reasons.



Geoff has also sent us this link to an article he wrote for "Senses of Cinema" in May 2000:


http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2000/feature-articles/ripley/


Many thanks Geoff!


pt





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Update on Sora, Luma, Runway Gen-2 Ai text and image machines.

Image
Recently I posted this: From Richard: We knew it was coming, but it's still hard to believe                                                                                                      February 20, 2024 In that blog Richard introduced me to SORA which I found astonishing. Some of you may also have been as astonished as I was.  Since then Richard sent me a new lead on "LUMA DREAM MACHINE" which offers in some respects more than what SORA did. Here's a link to their main page which has been going viral: https://lumalabs.ai/dream-machine Well I 've been playing with Luma for a few days now, and to-ing and fro-ing with Richard and Alix... some of the results took my breath away, some were totally disappointing. Let's start with...
Read more

Maria Korporal: An Introduction to Her Work

Image
Darko has recently introduced me to multimedia artist  Maria Korporal. Of Dutch origin, Maria   lived   in Italy  for many years but she has lived and worked in Berlin  since 2014 . Her artistic production includes video art, interactive projects, installations. Her multimedia work has been designed using a wide variety of techniques. The narrative aspect, both personal and social, plays a major role in her work which together with the directness of the images and the sounds leads to greater participation of the viewer. In her work she plays with virtuality and reality, with undergone and artificially generated experiences. Most of her projects deal with social and environmental issues, often with an ironic approach. A good example is her project Korporal Zoo , a series of video works made between 2010 and 2018, which observe the animal and human world from several perspectives: cultural, social, environmental.  Over the last two years Maria experienced the...
Read more

Eyeless in Gaza, images from the net.

Image
          Eyeless in Gaza...   Footnotes:   I wanted to leave these images up clear of any text. My friend Richard suggested we should acknowledge the sources so I've made a big effort to track them down out of respect for the incredible job they do, and especially for their courage, working in the dangerous zones where so many aid workers and journalists have lost their lives. But some are not credited on the pages of publications I drew them from. Here's a list I've just completed, numbered from the image No.1 at top of page down to the final one, No.9  1. Abdulqader Sabbah/Anadolu 2: Mohammed Dahman/AP 3.  P hotograph: Anadolu Agency/Anadolu/Getty Images 4. Photo:         WFP/Ali Jadallah 5.                       April 18, 2024. (AFP) 6: Mahmoud Issa: Reuters: Redux 7. Photographer: Mahmud Hams/AFP/Getty Images 8.  P hotographer: Anadolu Agency/Anadolu/Get...
Read more