Most Rewatchable Scene
Singing in the club
In the discussion (23)
Approx. transcript time · 00:38:37Read transcript
- First nominee: Tom hanging out with Dickie for the first time, including the lunch where Tom impersonates Dickie's father and lists his talents as forging signatures, telling lies and impersonating practically anybody.
- Revealing his talents so early seems odd, perhaps a mind trick; Dickie does not remember him from Princeton but is enamored, since charismatic people like being around those they can push around.
- Con men often reveal part of their strategy to make you trust them, which makes the talents exchange a cool scene.
- A shout-out goes to the opening credits, styled after Saul Bass's Hitchcock credits (Strangers on a Train was also a Highsmith adaptation), with sliding lines that fit the film's theme of how people are seen and can flip.
- The mid-to-late 90s is called the era when movies got good at credits, citing Enemy of the State and Seven.
- Tom singing jazz with Dickie in the club for the first time is called possibly a host's wife's favorite movie scene of all time, and another participant's spouse is also obsessed with it; it condenses the movie's themes into two minutes.
- The singer Fausto sells the song, and Damon, brought in near the end, plays it as awkward but thrilled to be there, which is good character building.
- Freddie's entrance is called an all-time five seconds and one of the best entrances in movie history: he pulls into a piazza in a cherry-red car and his first line asks whether you want to sleep with everyone you see just once.
- The entrance is called sleazy but charming in a Freddie way.
- Next come Freddie mocking Tom at breakfast for living off Dickie, the boat line asking why men at play always pretend to kill each other, and Freddie's repeated 'Tommy, how's the peeping', which the hosts wonder whether Hoffman improvised.
- The boat murder is called violent, weird and well acted; it turns ugly with the 'third class mooch' insult and unfolds so that an unintentional killing seems realistic.
- Dickie's 'you can be a leech, and it's boring' line, used in the cold open, is called one of the more devastating digs you can put on a person.
- Ripley is also protecting things he wants known but will not say, such as being in love with Dickie; a counterpoint frames the tension as wanting to be with Dickie versus wanting to be Dickie.
- The chess scene with Dickie in the bathtub is added as important: its unspoken power dynamics and possible sexual challenge set Ripley off.
- Another participant left the bathtub scene out as trying 10% too hard to establish sexual tension; neither thought Dickie was gay, rather that he lords everyone's attraction over them, even Freddie's.
- Tom running into Peter and Marge at the opera is nominated: right after the opera parallel to killing Dickie, he is strutting as Dickie, slinks around the corner to avoid exposure, and Marge shows the first hint of suspicion.
- Freddie confronting Tom at the apartment is the next pick, for Hoffman's line readings about the new piano, the furnishings being bourgeois and Tom being a quick study.
- Freddie is thought to know Tom is a con man who did not go to Princeton, but not that he killed Dickie; he suspects Tom of taking advantage of Dickie, as everyone does.
- One participant has no more 100% rewatchable scenes and likes the first two-thirds more; Marge's late outburst at Tom is liked, a change from the book where she does not suspect him, but not given full rewatchable status.
- The Phil Baker Hall scene is nominated because it seems headed one way and goes the other.
- Like all the Ripley stories, including Purple Noon, the detective scene sets up a reveal and Ripley wriggles out; Purple Noon's ending, where he gets caught, is said to betray the uncatchable character.
- The detective says he does not like bullshit, then instead of accusing Tom offers him money for doing a good job; Phil Baker Hall is basically playing his Boogie Knights (as transcribed) character and is loved every time.
- Asked for the most rewatchable scene, the answer is the singing in the club, followed by 'I agree. I agree.'