Tag Archives: The Talented Mr Ripley

One Night In Capri

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This article was written for YES & NO Magazine’s special edition feature on Anthony Minghella, which appeared in Spring 2018.

Special people leave a trail behind them. Memories to be picked up and owned by others, turned over and treasured. Anthony was one of those people. Everybody has a piece of him. And it is correspondingly hard to find that one thing to define him, to communicate his essence through some singular experience or recollection.

But one of the most Anthony-evoking experiences for me is watching, or listening to, the scene in The Talented Mr Ripley in which they sing Tu Vuo Fa L’Americano. It feels like Anthony is there. He isn’t, I don’t think. Not lurking in the deep background of picture. Nor even adding (as he might easily have done) to the crowd singing voices in post-production. He isn’t there. And yet, in all the choices and flavours of that particularly delicious dish, he is there.

Firstly in its exuberance and joie de vivre. That was him. A day in which you sang with him felt like a hymn to life.

Secondly in the characters in the scene. The singer Fiorello’s easy, disarming way with his admirers. That was one side of Anthony. Jude Law’s sun-blessed Dickie. That was Ant too. The planets aligned for him. And above all, Matt Damon’s awkward Tom Ripley in the crowd, an admiring, detached observer of the on-stage high spirits – looking on, not belonging, not entitled; the writer’s detachment. That was Ant too. The boy who went to the smart hotels of our youth, but never through the front door – instead, delivering ice cream to the tradesmen’s entrance.

(He wore some of that blue-collar status even in success. When he took his first film, Truly, Madly, Deeply, to Cannes, the security guys wouldn’t let him in to his own screening. He protested that he was the director, and they laughed. “Sure!”)

Of course the importance of this scene in the movie is that Tom doesn’t remain at one remove. He is called forward, onto the stage to join in and sing with Fiorello and Dickie. This magical night in Naples changes the dynamic between Tom and Dickie. Dickie views him in a new light, and invites him into his life with Marge. Tom’s hard work in learning about jazz as a way of ingratiating himself with Dickie has paid off. He’s got himself an in.

That’s Anthony too. The effort behind success. The little guy on the outside. Waiting for his moment to sing.

If there is something of Anthony in all of the characters in the scene, and in the musicality of it, there is also something in the actual song, Tu Vuo Fa L’Americano. It’s a song which speaks, for me, of the feckless youth of I Vitelloni – one of Anthony’s favourite Fellini movies – and of our equivalent experiences on the Isle of Wight: colourless winters spent dreaming of glamour elsewhere. Empty beaches and pockets, and yet the determination to walk like a somebody. You want to be an American. You want to drink whiskey and soda. But the money for the Camel cigarettes comes from your Mum’s purse. It’s Ripley’s dream too, of course. Better to be a fake somebody than a real nobody.

Anthony did want to do the American thing. And he was aware of what a ridiculous, ersatz dream that was. Even when he was living it.

Which is not to say his life was phony. It was the opposite. His honesty could be arresting. Like the best of poets, his success was in his truth and integrity. His moments, faithfully and sometimes painfully reproduced, resonated. Maybe in the final analysis that’s why the Club Vesuvio scene in Ripley is so essentially him – because it is, of course, something which actually happened to him. He was dragged to a club one night in Capri with a gang of people in far more ebullient mood than him. He planned only to stay for a few moments and then retreat to his hotel room. But he was called to the stage – by a charming singer who turned out to be the famous Fiorello – and they ended up singing until four in the morning.

So when I see the Ripley scene, another one is conjured in my head, set in a club one night in Capri, starring my beautiful brother. I wasn’t even there, but I’ll pick up that moment from his trail, thank you, and turn it over, cherish it, make it mine.

For more memories of Anthony, and some extraordinary photos by Brigitte Lacombe, contact Yes & No Magazine for back issues.

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Ripley Cafe Arcari

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I love this photo from Ripley, not least because you can just see the “Cafe Arcari” logo in the background.

I remember Anthony being greatly amused when the studio was talking to him about the “Cafe Arcari” scene as if the Cafe Arcari were a real place. When in fact it was a little affectionate nod from him to our Mum, and her maiden name.

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Jack Davenport on Anthony Minghella

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13th May, 2012

These memories of Anthony were written by Jack Davenport for a proposed book on Anthony’s work by Meghna Mudaliar. Many thanks to Jack and Meghna for permission to share them here.

The night I arrived in Rome to start work on Ripley, I met Anthony in an almost comically perfect family restaurant in Trastevere. He was so happy and excited to be setting out on what was clearly a labour of love in the most complete sense. The film would show his adoration of Italy, the home of his ancestors; it would be a meditation on how social exclusion can corrupt a sense of self.

My not-so-hidden terror at working with a man whose previous film had garnered nine Academy Awards evaporated almost instantly in his embrace. Literally. Ant was one of the most effusively tactile people I have ever met. He used touch the way other people use words. It is a measure of the gentleness of the man that his continual pummelling and kneading never felt like an invasion, but simply an extension of his not inconsiderable powers of communication.

My nervousness at working with Ant stemmed from the fact that he was the first true artist I had ever been directed by. I remember how alarming it was receiving notes from him on set. Often, the open-endedness of the emotional world one is trying to create, means that discussing variations in performance can be a relatively free-form discussion, almost a gentle negotiation. With Ant however, his note giving was positively laser-like in it’s precision. Much of this was of course to do with the fact he had written the script. It was a case of knowing the topography of his story so well that he knew exactly what he was after, at all times. Which is not to say he was bullying or domineering, he just directed with a clear-eyed exactness that was rare indeed.

Somebody told me early on in our rehearsal period for the film that my character, Peter Smith-Kingsley (who in the novel appears in only one scene), had become in Ant’s writing an amalgam of qualities that he most admired in people. I found this information frankly terrifying, but Ant put it to me slightly differently. He said that Peter was the only character in the story who was comfortable in their own skin, and it was this quality that attracted Tom Ripley. A big part of that attraction was also bound up in Peter’s profession as a musician. Music saturates the film, and is used by many characters to say things they cannot express themselves. Ant’s insistence that I learn to conduct the Stabat Mater piece and play the piano, was the greatest excavation tool he gave me for the character. He would give me beautiful selections of music to help me get inside Peter’s head. I’m sure Ant would have endorsed the Walter Pater quote about all art aspiring to the condition of music. Indeed, that idea seems to be one of the major themes of the film.

I remember a story Anthony told me about a gift he had been given one the first day of shooting by his editor, the great Walter Murch. Walter had presented Anthony with a lacquered box filled with tiny hand-tied scrolls, one for each day of principal photography. Each one contained an aphorism that Walter had chosen and written out. Anthony said he would open one at random first thing, and then ponder it while he stood in the shower. He told me how strange it was that whatever the scroll said, there would be a moment during the day’s filming where it’s sentiment would prove to be weirdly pertinent. I always thought you must be able to inspire friendship and loyalty of a higher order to receive a gift like that. I still get a kick out of thinking how much fun Walter would have got making those scrolls, and how much pleasure Anthony received every morning as he rolled ‘Professor Murch’s Thought for the Day’, around his head.

The last time I saw Ant, we bumped into each other on a bridge in Austin, Texas. I was shooting a movie, and he was in town to support his son Max at a film festival. He was so proud, and so easy in the role of not-being-the-centre-of-attention. It was an honour to know Anthony Minghella- he was a man of huge achievement who wore his success as lightly as anyone could. I miss him terribly.

– Jack Davenport, September 2008