Word: marge
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...cocky Americans it portrays, "Purple Noon," a recently re-released 1960 French thriller, succeeds because of its ability to disconcert. Disconcerting is the premise of the film itself, that French actors speaking French and dressed in French clothing can somehow seem American if given American-sounding names like "Tom," "Marg," and "Freddy." Disconcerting is Clemote's use of the Italian setting, on which noon-strength sun gnaws, leeching color from sails, crumbling villas and driving everyone pretty much mad. Most disconcerting, certainly, are the mesmerizing eyes of Alain Delon, who, as the poor but desperate Tom, is able to manipulate...
...appears on the American scene in Italy as a professional friend, employed by a rich American to retrieve his neer-do-well son, Philipe(Maurice Ronet), who has been roaming around Italy spending his father's money and annoying his fiancee Marg(Marie Laforet) for a year. Philipe seems to take pleasure in torturing Tom, telling Tom that he'll return to America and Tom will get his money, while clearly having no intention of doing so. On a disastrous yachting trip on which Tom gets sunstroke, Philipe throws Marg's manuscript overboard, and Marg demands to be put ashore...
...simultaneously. Ronet and Delon even look uncannily alike with their blue-green eyes, tan bodies, open shirts and light colored pants. In perhaps the most disturbing scene of the film, Tom, alone in Philipe's bedroom, puts on Philipe's clothes and starts speaking as Philipe, pretending to address Marg and kissing his own image in the mirror. Philipe discovers him and orders, "Take off my clothes", which to contemporary ears sounds like a sexual demand. Incredibly, the homoeroticism of this scene was not apparent to the audiences of the sixties, but this coded tension is vital to understanding...
...second half of the film belongs to Delon, who, separated from Philipe and Marg, starts his own odyssey across Italy on which he attempts to emulate every extravagance of their decadent lifestyle. It is here that Tom's character is at last developed. The extremity of his ambitions and envy is demonstrated by his tigerlike eating--at times of tension he is seen devouring a peach in three angry bites, gnashing down a blazing chicken straight from the oven with his bare hands, slicing and gulping down long meaty lengths of sausage. All the while his sculpted good looks, strong...
...model of the Ugly American, throwing around money, speaking loudly, insulting everyone around him. His knife-in-the-back treatment of Tom-- he sets Tom adrift on a dinghy, embarrasses him by making him seem ill-bred, makes him steer the boat while he has sex with Marg-- makes him hard to like by any standards. The hapless Marg is wholly pitiable, toting around a guitar to which she croons mercilessly, plotting out her book on Fra Angelica, becoming a pawn in Philipe and Tom's rivalry and being utterly unable to fight back. The weakness of her character...