“To restore morality, we must first recognize the source from which all morality springs,” (Roy Moore). To Alfred Hitchcock, the restoration of morality is everything. Morality comes from biological sources such as survival instincts, as well as society and human interaction. Morality plays the starring role in everyone’s life and is an important detail in Hitchcock’s films. Film reviewer Jamey Hughton claims that Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley would leave director Alfred Hitchcock in awe after viewing the film.
Hughton states this because he believes Minghella seems to have replicated Hitchcock’s breathtaking work in this film. Although the two movies are incredibly well filmed thrillers, I would have to disagree with Hughton’s claim because Minghella does not portray all of Hitchcock’s core ideas, especially the most important theme of them all. Jamey Hughton’s review about Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley is very accurate, but in comparison to Hitchcock’s work, Hughton is wrong in saying that everything in this film is a reflection of Hitchcock’s work.
Alfred Hitchcock directed Shadow of a Doubt, in which Charles Oakley travels across the United States and stays with family in order to escape being convicted of murder. In this film, as well as every one of Hitchcock’s films, he has many core ideas that are shown throughout the film. These core ideas are that the line between good and evil is blurred, the protagonist is relatable, and that moral order is restored in the end. All of these ideas and many more were shown in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt. One of the ideas that shows up is the line between good and evil being blurred and this is shown through Young Charlie.
At the beginning of this film, Charlie was an innocent, young schoolgirl who was bored with her ordinary life. At the end of the film, Charlie is a mature young adult after Uncle Charlie is gone and out of her life. This transformation happens because as the story progresses, it turns out Charlie is not the young girl she once was anymore. During a scene in the film, Charlie is talking to Uncle Charlie on the porch and she threatens to kill her uncle herself if he dares hurt her family. Charlie does this because she is being protective of her family, but to say she would kill her uncle herself is a bit of a concern.
At this point, the viewer is unsure of who is good and who is evil because the good girl is now threatening to kill a family member. This element fits Hitchcock’s core idea of the line between good and evil being blurred because Charlie was supposedly good, but at this point it is questionable if she still is. Another key idea that Hitchcock utilises is that he makes the protagonist relatable. Charlie is a teenage girl with a boring, ordinary life. She lives in a small town where the same things happen everyday. Charlie is relatable because she wishes something exciting would happen because she is sick of her lame life.
Nearly everyone can relate to this and Hitchcock manipulates that idea of her relatability by maturing her throughout the movie into something people do not want to willing relate to. Hitchcock makes his characters relatable so the viewer can feel connected to the film and get even further into the film. The last idea that Hitchcock uses is the most important out of all of his core ideas. This idea is that moral order is restored by the end of the film. In Shadow of a Doubt, moral order is restored by Charlie getting rid of Uncle Charlie.
Charlie does this by pushing him out of a train and killing him. Killing Uncle Charlie restores moral order because Uncle Charlie was a murderer who was trying to escape from what he did by staying with his family on the other side of the country. At first, Charlie was oblivious to the fact that her uncle was a murderer, but she eventually caught on after he tried to kill her twice. In the end, Charlie eventually catches up to Uncle Charlie and eliminates him as a threat. This concept is the most important to Hitchcock and appears in every single one of his films.
If a film based off Hitchcock’s ideas does not have this concept, then the film is uncomparable to Hitchcock’s work. These three ideas show up in all of Hitchcock’s films and if all of them are not present in the film, then the film cannot be compared to Hitchcock’s brilliant work. Anthony Minghella directed The Talented Mr. Ripley, a film about a sociopath who is sent by a man’s father to retrieve his son from Italy after his son left the country and his family behind. This story takes a turn when Tom Ripley, the sociopath, kills the son, Dickie Greenleaf, and assumes his identity.
Some of Hitchcock’s ideas can be uncovered in this film, but not all of them. The first key concept is that the line between good and evil is blurred. This concept is the only one of the three to be prominently shown in this film. Dickie Greenleaf is a wealthy, handsome man who has anything he could possibly want. Dickie is not necessarily supposed to be viewed as a bad guy, but he is in this film because of the way he treats people. When he was in school, Dickie beat up a boy and nearly killed him. On top of assaulting a fellow student, Dickie also treats his fiancee and friend very poorly.
Dickie cheats on his fiancee with another girl and he constantly puts down his friend. Although Tom is the sociopath in this film, he is seen as a bit of a better person than Dickie because Dickie is plain rude, whereas Tom was not blatantly as mean. Dickie is not meant to be seen as evil, but through the eyes of our protagonist Tom, he seems to be. This blur between and Tom and Dickie is a basis of one of Hitchcock’s ideas. The next key idea is that the protagonist is relatable, which is somewhat applicable to Tom Ripley.
Even though Tom is the protagonist, he is also a sociopath who kills three people and gets away with it. Although that part of Tom is not relatable, parts of him and his personality are. Tom struggles with himself and throughout the film, he has to overcome problems revolving around self-esteem, social stigma, and loving himself. Tom has low self-esteem and because of this, he tries to become someone he is not. When he becomes who he wants to be, he is able to overcome his social stigma that he used to be judged for. He was once poor, but when he becomes Dickie Greenleaf, he is now wealthy and who he wants to be.
Lastly, Tom had not found any reason to ever love himself until he met Peter, whom he eventually killed because he chose to be Dickie Greenleaf rather than Tom Ripley. The elements of overcoming self-esteem problems, social stigma, and beginning to love himself are relatable, but not every aspect of Tom is relatable. Hitchcock believes the protagonist should be relatable and although Tom is not completely relatable, he is in certain ways that Hitchcock would approve of. The final most important core idea is that moral order is restored, which The Talented Mr. Ripley does not pass the test for.
In Hitchcock’s films, moral order is restored and that is the single most important core idea that Hitchcock has present in every single one of his films. Tom Ripley is a sociopath who took someone’s identity and in the end he got away with everything he did. During the film, Tom Ripley manages to kill three people and steal the identity of the first person he killed. Only one person in the film thought Tom was the killer and was right about it. Marge, Dickie’s fiancee, believed that Tom was the killer and if Mr. Greenleaf, Dickie’s father, listened to her, then Tom would have been caught and unable to get away with what he did.
If he did not get away with murdering three people and stealing someone’s identity, the film would have accomplished Hitchcock’s most important idea and would have him in awe. The Talented Mr. Ripley was brilliantly directed and filmed, but without passing the most important concept of Hitchcock’s films, it cannot live up to what Hitchcock accomplished during his time. Both Hitchcock and Minghella do a splendid job at portraying the stories in their films. The use of photography and themes allow them to uniquely portray their characters and the plot of the story.
Although the two directors based the films off similar concepts, not all the concepts are entirely the same and this makes the films and the directors themselves unique. There are a few concepts that the films have in common, but they are also played out in different ways. The biggest issue when comparing these films is the topic of morality. Morality is always restored in Hitchcock’s film and it is not restored in Minghella’s. Since this key idea is not present, Minghella does not preserve enough fundamentals of Hitchcock’s themes.