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