HFA highlights Highsmith
It's little wonder that the novels of Patricia Highsmith have seduced so many important filmmakers. Beginning with Alfred Hitchcock's 1951 film of her first book, ''Strangers on a Train," directors have found a kindred spirit in this strange woman who used the veneer of thriller writing to explore psychological, moral, and existential issues with the greatest of subtlety.
Highsmith is best known for ''The Talented Mr. Ripley," the 1955 novel in which the protagonist, Tom Ripley, not only gets away with murder, but goes on to live a rich, rewarding, and occasionally homicidal life in four sequels.
On Sunday, Harvard Film Archive presents the 1999 adaptation of that film with Matt Damon, preceded by René Clément's 1960 version, ''Purple Noon," with Alain Delon. And the day before, the Cambridge theater shows Liliana Cavani's great 2002 film of the third book in the series, ''Ripley's Game," followed by ''The American Friend," Wim Wenders's 1977 adaptation of the same novel.
It's a fascinating idea because the films' only similarities are in the basic plotline. Aside from that, you might not even recognize the same authorial voice from one to the other. Highsmith certainly didn't in the earliest two, made during her lifetime. (Before we go any further, it should be noted that in this context it's necessary to talk about the ending of the two adaptations of ''The Talented Mr. Ripley," so if you haven't seen them yet, you might want to do so before reading on.)
Delon was her favorite Ripley, and she liked the look of the film, set in the Italian Riviera. (Who wouldn't? Clément's work is beautiful to watch.) But she was chagrined that Clément, like Hitchcock in ''Strangers," chickened out from her thornier vision of the universe. The moral ambiguity that is so much a part of Highsmith's world succumbed to the vision of a natural order of crime and punishment.
Anthony Minghella came closer in 1999 with ''The Talented Mr. Ripley." With Matt Damon making himself look as nerdy as possible as he attaches himself to the ultra-charismatic Jude Law as Dickie Greenleaf, whose father has hired Ripley to persuade Dickie to come back to the States.
Minghella and Damon are excellent at capturing Ripley's self-loathing and his determination to turn himself into someone who is worthy of Dickie's attention by mimicking how Greenleaf carries himself. Instead of shying away from the latent homosexuality in the novel, which the earlier film did, Minghella makes Ripley obviously gay. And though Ripley doesn't get caught by the authorities, Minghella can't let him get away with murder psychologically. He has paid too high a price.
When Highsmith revisited Ripley in 1970 with ''Ripley Under Ground," he was rich, married to a beautiful woman, living in the French countryside, as charismatic and sure of himself as Dickie Greenleaf ever was, and having a merry old time in the art forgery business. Oh, and killing somebody who figures out his scam.
The third novel, 1974's ''Ripley's Game," attracted renewed cinematic attention. Highsmith was appalled by Dennis Hopper's ''Easy Rider" version of Ripley in ''The American Friend" -- he even quotes ''Ballad of Easy Rider." But she did come to see that Wenders's film is quite good on the filmmaker's terms.
Wenders basks in the popular culture of the day and the grainy texture of the film brilliantly mixes a mood of insecurity and moral uncertainty with a sense of adventurousness that makes the dread exhilarating.
Still, by today's standards, Hopper is an awfully loopy Tom Ripley. Even by '70s standards, you can see why Highsmith would have been shaking her head.
She would have been nodding in approval, though, if she had made it to 2002 for Cavani and John Malkovich. (She died in 1995.) Cavani's sensibility is closer to Highsmith's than any of the other filmmakers. ''The Night Porter," written by Cavani and Barbara Alberti, dealt with the obsessive love between an ex-Nazi and the woman he abused in a concentration camp when they meet years later. Cavani, like Highsmith, realizes the attraction of the dark side.
Malkovich personifies that attraction here brilliantly. There's a Zen-like calmness to him whether he's bludgeoning someone to death at the start of the movie, or walking in on his wife's harpsichord recital toward the end. But hell hath no fury like a Ripley scorned and when he's insulted for being the wrong class at a party, circumstances are set in motion that not only make for a taut thriller, but for an investigation of conscience, morality, and even the silence of God.
The filmmaking is gorgeous, with the good life in the Veneto area of Italy substituting for the French countryside. And there is a sublime sense of understatement on Malkovich's part, making this one of the best performances of his career. ''I don't worry about getting caught," he says matter-of-factly, ''because I don't believe anyone is watching."
Here at last, as in her novels, the writer who had more in common with Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus than with Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett is done full justice by a filmmaker. Highsmith would have pooh-poohed the idea, but perhaps there is a sense of justice after all.
Ed Siegel can be reached at siegel@globe.com. 
