So in the very beginning when he first meets Meredith, why does he call himself Dickie? He hadn't even met Dickie yet and hadn't planned on taking his identity. How he killed Dickie was actually an accident and unplanned so Tom was NOT planning to impersonate Dickie from the beginning.
Btw I REALLY hated Meredith's character. She was just an uppity, annoying, snobby self centered brat. Also found Marge annoying as well.
Because he wanted to appear to be someone important to an attractive, well heeled young woman. If I remember correctly, she replies positively by remembering that the Greenleaf name was connected to shipping, which again emboldens Ripley to keep up the charade. It ties in with the notion of him being a "fake somebody rather than a real nobody". Remember he had already lied about his Princeton connections, which basically allowed him to go to Italy on a rich man's dime. Ripley was certainly not planning on fully assuming Dickie's identity at this stage but it certainly shows he would lie & manipulate in order to get his way.
shareI completely agree, Joker. He just wanted to seem important and didn't expect to see her again.
-
Consider the daffodil. And while you're doing that I'll be over here looking through your stuff.
Tom did not lie about his Princeton connections, nor did he say that he knew Dickie. He was indeed at Princeton, just in a lowlier capacity than Herbert Greenleaf had presumed. Pretending to Meredith to be Dickie was Tom's first outright lie.
"I am always happy to engage in POLITE discourse."
Didn't he tell Dickies father, in the beginning of the movie, that he knew Dickie from college? That seems like the first lie..
shareNo, he didn't - but he implied he did. When asked if he knew Dickie at Princeton, he replied, 'How is Dickie?'
"I am always happy to engage in POLITE discourse."
At the beginning of the film the NY Driver pointed out that doors would open being connected to the Greenleaf name. A hotel desk clerk mistook Tom for Dickie which surprised Tom. Then he was entertained by the idea, then he started seeing that he could possibly get away with pretending to be Dickie. Right away as Dickie, Meredith had an opera ticket for him. Banks were cashing Dickie's checks. He had an apartment as Dickie. After the experimental phase Tom had to be Dickie for the ruse to continue.
People think Marge is annoying? Marge has a cheerful sparkle when she isn't desperate deluded wife wannabe. Cate Blanchett as Meredith was the real horror show. Tom wasn't about to get stuck with her. Meredith's repulsive character, aside from complicating Tom's ruse, explains how a playboy might want to be hitched to a sweet, accepting, in-love woman in order to back off the Meredith gold diggers. Plus the scene on the piazza shows what a mastermind Ripley was at taking huge risks to manipulate everyone to his ends. He was watching to see if Peter, Marge or Meredith did anything out of character, in which case he needed to skip town pronto.
Good point on the Limo driver, but all of the other events happen after he met Meredith.
Also to the op, I agree, but that just means they are great actresses.
When she was bragging to Am Ex guy about being "naughty" because they spent so much money, I just about puked.
Had Tom known that American circles in Italy would be as small as they turned out to be he might not have introduced himself to Meredith as Dickie but he did and the die was cast.
Aside from being manipulative and calculating Tom is lucky with events unfolding the way or better than could have been hoped for. He didn't plan on different investigators being sent to question him in Venice for example. We watch shaking our heads, "Are you ever lucky." Tom is all but shaking his head in that scene telling himself, "Are you ever lucky."
The film plays on the incredulity we feel when we figure out what someone is all about but then watch that person continue to play everyone and get away with it no matter what, like Marge, we say.
That contrasts with the wealthy kids insulting Tom in so many ways we are glad he played them.
I didn't like the books. Detailed descriptions of hallway cabinets to the point where I was saying, "I am not looking that up. I don't care if the author wants to show off her/Tom's burgeoning knowledge of fine furniture" but I love how the book plot twists work as film plots. I wonder if Highsmith wrote the stories based on people she watched with her jaw hanging open or if someone told her about someone and she started piecing together the stories in her imagination or maybe she wished she was kind of like Tom Ripley.
FOR MothNM ~ THis, from mentalfloss.com:
"Early one morning in the summer of 1952, Patricia Highsmith awoke in a room at the Albergo Miramare hotel in Positano, Italy. The 31-year-old author had been traveling through Europe with her girlfriend, Ellen Blumenthal Hill, and the two weren’t getting along. Leaving Hill in bed, Highsmith walked to the end of a balcony overlooking the beach. It’s not as if things weren’t going well for her—her novel Strangers on a Train had just been adapted for the screen by Alfred Hitchcock. But the tumultuous relationship was taking a toll. As she gazed out at the sand, pulling on a cigarette, she watched “a solitary young man in shorts and sandals, with a towel flung over his shoulder, making his way along the beach. There was an air of pensiveness about him, maybe unease,” she recalled in a 1989 issue of Granta magazine. She started to wonder: “Had he quarreled with someone? What was on his mind?”
The intrigue stuck with her. Two years later, while living in a cottage rented from an undertaker in Lenox, Mass., Highsmith drew from that image as she began a new novel, about a man named Tom Ripley. Even then, she sensed that she was onto something special. “She considered [The Talented Mr. Ripley] ‘healthier’ and ‘handsomer’ than her other books at its ‘birth,’” Joan Schenkar writes in her excellent biography The Talented Miss Highsmith.
Highsmith’s instincts were correct: With the charming sociopath Ripley, she’d created a new type of character entirely. In five novels over the next four decades, he’d become not only her most acclaimed and memorable creation but the prototype for a new kind of antihero: the unlikable, immoral, cold-blooded killer we can’t help but like anyway. Ripley was a character so fully realized, so simultaneously compelling and disturbing, it seemed as if he were based on someone Highsmith knew intimately. In a sense, he was."
Thanks for posting this.
shareYou are so welcome! I love reading about Patricia Highsmith. As a Texan myself, I cannot imagine her "fitting in" back when she was growing up here. It is no wonder she moved to Europe as soon as she could. I have read most of her books. She is a great mind and a wonderful writer of stories that really stay with you.
This film is exquisite, to me. The novel, the screenplay, the direction, and most of all each character. Just a perfect film, imho.
All started in Patricia Highsmith's mind.....love it!
"Had Tom known that American circles in Italy would be as small as they turned out to be he might not have introduced himself to Meredith as Dickie but he did and the die was cast."
This is what I don't understand about the end of the movie...Tom (whom Meredith thinks is Dickie)is spotted by Meredith on the ship and she somehow hadn't heard that Dickie Greenleaf had killed himself? And if she hadn't heard about that interesting bit of news at that point wouldn't Tom be more concerned about Meredith hearing about it later, therefore it would have been wiser for Tom to do away with her rather than Peter?
Loved this movie but I do think this was a big plot hole...
I don't get the Meredith hate. She was hardly a golddigger; she came from serious family wealth. Her problem was that since finishing college, she had no purpose to her life. She had no talent or passion for the arts like Marge and Dickie, and she had no need to earn a living. Being wealthy, she could not relate to ordinary people who had to work. She was isolated, lonely, and needy. All she wanted apparently was to settle down with a suitable man, and take up a life similar to her mother's and her classmates. I think she might have made a loving wife and a decent mother.
shareThis is one of those posts that is supposed to make everyone laugh and scream at the same time, right?
shareQuite serious actually. I notice on the internet in general and posters on IMDB boards in particular have a special reserve of hatred for people or characters that are slim, beautiful and privileged. I do not share this.
shareThere is someone for everyone.
shareI'm afraid I found Meredith extremely irritating from the offset but rather liked Marge.
It has nothing to do with her looks but everything to do with her initial pushy way when she made a beeline for Tom. She came across as very desperate and I considered her rather rude - even prying into why he was standing at the "R" queue. None of her business!!
Then there was her rather flippant dismissive and ungrateful attitude to her inherited wealth. "Trying to shrug off the dress". Well I am pretty sure there were plenty of unfortunate and needy folks who would have been grateful for just a tiny amount of the fortune that she claimed to hate. That is how spoilt people behave when they were born with a silver spoon in their mouths. She should have carried herself more modestly.
Another reason I disliked her character was that strangely, I was rooting for Tom and felt his utter dismay when Meredith kept appearing at the most inopportune times with her clingy and in-your-face ways although I give her credit for her interaction and dignity with Marge. I did feel a little sympathetic for Meredith during that cafe scene. But Meredith had no claim on Tom although she behaved as though he owed her something when they met on the boat.
Has anyone seen my wife? - Columbo
neither do I! I find Meredith absolutelky beautiful!
shareI wouldn't be so sure he was not planning on taking dickie's identity. At the very least he wanted to be Dickie. I remember a scene where Tom is observing Marge and Dickie (just before he meets with them for the first time) while practicing italian. One of the phrases Tom uses is something similar to "this is my face now", while watching Dickie.
shareOne of the phrases Tom uses is something similar to "this is my face now", while watching Dickie.
Tom was calculating and cunning to a degree but he was also socially awkward, needy, romantic and delusional. He had this idea that he and Dickie would live happily ever after together, once Dickie realised how much he loved Tom (in Tom's mind). He honestly thought that Dickie would ditch Marge and Freddie and the two would become lovers, spending their time touring Italy and the rest of Europe together. Of course, his deluded fantasy was just that....a fantasy.
I think in the beginning he had no intention of killing Dickie. He wanted to be Dickie but he wanted Dickie as well. Pretending to be Dickie was part of Tom's weird hero worship.
Don't let anyone ever make you feel like you don't deserve what you want.
Pretending to be Dickie was part of Tom's weird hero worship.
Trying to remember if Meredith already nknew Dicikie and had been wiht him before meeting Tom or she never knew Dickie, just like Tom, and Tom, already sent to get Dickie impersonated him..I just rememebred it was the latter, that's how he passed himself off, Meredith had never even MET Dickie. Marge and Silvana were the only girls he'd dated that had any important onscreen part.
share