Purple Noon (French: Plein soleil; Italian: Delitto in pieno sole; also known as Full Sun, Blazing Sun, Lust for Evil, and Talented Mr. Ripley)[2] is a 1960 crime thriller film starring Alain Delon (in his first major role), alongside Marie Laforêt and Maurice Ronet; Romy Schneider, Delon's girlfriend at the time, makes a brief cameo appearance in the film.

The film follows Tom Ripley, a young American sent to Italy to convince wealthy playboy Philippe Greenleaf to return home.

Directed by René Clément, the French/Italian international co-production is loosely based on the 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith.

Handsome young American Tom Ripley has been sent to Italy by the father of wealthy playboy Philippe Greenleaf to persuade him to return to San Francisco and take over the family business.

Tom becomes fixated on Philippe and his fiancée, Marge, and covets the other man's life of luxury and leisure in the beautiful seaside town of Mongibello.

The final straw for Tom is reached during a yachting trip when Philippe strands him in the dinghy and accidentally leaves him to drift for hours in the blazing sun.

[7] Roger Ebert gave the film three stars (compared to the four-star review he gave to 1999's The Talented Mr. Ripley[8]), writing that "the best thing about the film is the way the plot devises a way for Ripley to create a perfect cover-up", while criticizing the "less than satisfactory ending", about which he wrote: "Purple Noon ends as it does only because Clement doesn't have Highsmith's iron nerve".

[11] In the entry for Purple Noon on Berardinelli's All-Time Top 100 list, he compared it to the 1999 film, saying: "The remake went back to the source material, Patricia Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley.

"[12] Nandini Ramnath, writing for Scroll.in, said: "The definitive portrayal of crime novelist Patricia Highsmith's most enduring creation was as early as 1960.

Damon and Hopper[a] come close to conveying the ruthlessness and ambition of Tom Ripley, but Delon effortlessly captures his mystique.

[17][18] On 4 December 2012, The Criterion Collection released the high-definition digital restoration of Purple Noon on Blu-ray and DVD.