Summary
A close up shot of the instruments in a jazz combo at the club in San Remo begins the next chapter of the story. Dickie and Tom look down at a swinging party happening below them in an outdoor courtyard. The scene shifts to show the two men sipping drinks and toasting to their short-lived time together. Tom raises a toast to “Mongibello and the happiest days of my life,” which makes Dickie observe how cheerful Tom is, before asking matter of factly if he actually knew Tom at Princeton. Because it is the eve of Tom’s departure, Dickie comes clean about his suspicion that Tom did not actually go to Princeton, assuring Tom that it is a compliment because “most of the thugs at Princeton have tasted everything and have no taste.” Dickie confides that Freddie is the perfect example of the thick, tasteless men who are typical of Princeton. Dickie reveals that Marge and he had a bet about whether or not Tom actually went to Princeton, before asking Tom if he even likes jazz. Tom reveals that he’s “gotten to like it,” and that he’s gotten to like everything about the way Dickie lives, but just as Tom reveals that “it’s one big love affair," Dickie stands and walks away to watch the band. Tom attempts to tell Dickie how important he is to him, but Dickie is preoccupied by his own concerns.
The following day, Dickie and Tom go out in a small motorboat, as Dickie believes that that’s the best way for him to find a home in San Remo. Out in the middle of the ocean, Dickie drives the boat fast and Tom asks him, laughing, to slow down. They stop in the middle of the open ocean, where Tom tells Dickie that he plans to come back to Italy to visit next year with his own money. As Tom goes through all the options for how they might live together—splitting rent, Tom getting a place in Rome—Dickie says “I don’t think so.” When Tom tells Dickie to just blame him if Marge is standing between their living together, Dickie tells Tom that he and Marge are getting married. This upsets Tom, who says that Dickie is ogling girls all over the place, protesting, “you love me, but you’re not marrying me.” Dickie insists that he does not love Tom and that he is a little relieved that Tom is going, because Tom can be a “leech.” Tom becomes very upset and the camera frame zooms in on his bewildered and curious expression.
Dickie does not stop there, telling Tom he can be quite boring, which only gets Tom more riled up. Insisting that he has told the truth throughout their entire friendship, Tom suggests that there was obviously a deeper connection between them the night they played chess and Dickie took a bath. When Dickie says he does not know what Dickie is referring to, Tom becomes more upset, suggesting it was crude of him to have sex with Marge on the boat, but then sleep around, and after all still plan to marry Marge. When Tom presses Dickie more about his commitment issues, Dickie threatens Tom with a punch and slaps him in the face, calling him a “third class mooch” and going on a tangent about how Tom gives him the creeps. Dickie’s bullying makes Tom more and more upset, and when Dickie compares Tom’s demeanor to a little girl’s, Tom hits him hard in the face with a nearby oar, giving him a terrible head wound that begins to bleed immediately. Seeing how badly he has wounded Dickie, Tom tries to help him, but Dickie attacks him furiously, and they struggle to get control of the oar. When Tom does finally get control of the oar he bludgeons Dickie to death, panting in shock at his own violence. Left with a dead body in the middle of the open water, Tom looks down at his violent act as the camera pans to the glow of the light on the water. Tom sleeps in the boat, holding Dickie’s dead body. Eventually he sinks the ship and finds safety on the rocky coast, wrapping himself in a towel and shivering.
Tom comes back to the hotel in San Remo, shivering and asks the concierge for his key. When the concierge mistakes Tom for Dickie, Tom begins to correct him, before realizing he can get away with pretending to be Dickie. He does not correct him. On the train back to Mongibello, Tom looks out the rain-covered window despondently. Arriving back at the house, Tom sees Dickie’s saxophone where he left it. He types a letter at Dickie’s desk from Dickie to Marge and signs it, forging Dickie’s signature. The scene shifts to Marge writing in a garden, where Tom approaches her, scaring her to the point of uttering a brief scream. Tom asks Marge how her writing is coming and appears to have a pleasant demeanor. When Marge asks after Dickie, Tom tells her that he thinks Dickie plans to stay in San Remo. Feigning ignorance, Tom tells a confused Marge that he does not know what Dickie wants, bemoaning Dickie’s capriciousness and inconsistent affection. Tom tells Marge that Dickie wanted to be alone and hands her a bottle of her favorite perfume, with the letter enclosed, which he says Dickie sent. He then tells Marge that Dickie needs him to bring some clothes and his saxophone, and when Marge asks how long he will be gone, Tom laughs and says, “I guess we’re abandoned.”
Marge walks on the beach to a dock and looks out over the sea, while Tom watches her from nearby. Inside the house Marge drops an ice tray, and explains and gets upset explaining that there was a letter from Dickie with her perfume, which says that he is planning to move to Rome, even though the night before he left they had talked about moving together. Marge cries, feeling remorse that she potentially pressured Dickie too much about getting married and scared him off, and wondering if she should come with Tom to Rome to confront Dickie. However, on second thought, she and Tom agree that Dickie does not like to be confronted.
Tom assumes Dickie’s well-respected position in society, sporting Dickie’s clothes and checking in to two different hotels as himself and Dickie, respectively, to avoid suspicion. Tom makes phone calls between the two hotels, masquerading as both himself and Dickie, playacting as the two of them and leaving messages with the concierges at each hotel.
At a high-end store in Rome, Tom asks a clerk to have his wallet embossed, when he is interrupted by Meredith Logue, who taps on the glass and waves to Tom, recognizing him from the train station. Meredith is excited to have run into Tom, who she still believes to be Dickie, and they walk through a palazzo, chatting. In their chat, Tom learns that Meredith knows about the ski trip to Cortina, knows Freddie Miles, and has heard about his relationship with Marge. Tom continues to play the part of Dickie, and tells Meredith that he has left Marge and Mongibello. Meredith confides in him that “if you have had money all your life and despise it, then you only feel truly comfortable around other people who have money and despise it.” At a bank, Tom signs a money order as Dickie, while Meredith gets money from the teller. Tom and Meredith are visited by a tailor, so Tom can pick out a suit. While Tom changes into a turtleneck, Meredith sheepishly invites Tom to the opera, an invitation he accepts.
Meredith and Tom attend Tchaikovsky’s opera Eugene Onegin, and Tom is spellbound by the performance, watching eagerly as a tenor sings a mournful aria. The audience watches as two men fight a duel in the snow, one wounding the other. Tom watches, riveted, as the wounded man lies in a puddle of his own blood in the snow, and the lights go red. Tom is moved and claps passionately at the end. Coming out of the box, Tom thanks Meredith’s aunt and uncle, who invited him to the opera, and the aunt in particular is sure she has met Dickie Greenleaf before. In the lobby of the opera house, he unexpectedly runs into a young man and Marge. Marge asks Tom if he is at the opera with Dickie, and the young man introduces himself as Peter Smith-Kingsley. Marge notices that Tom is not wearing his glasses, and Peter and Marge question Tom about Dickie’s whereabouts. Marge is confused because Tom had told her he was going to Venice, but Tom deflects by saying he has been traveling. Much to Tom’s visible concern, Peter notices Meredith and almost says hello, as Tom inches towards the door, but luckily Meredith does not see him, and Tom agrees to meet the two of them for coffee the following morning. As they return to their seats, Marge tells Peter that she does not understand why Tom is still in Rome.
Back in the box, Tom convinces Meredith to leave and go look at the moon with him, just in time to avoid Marge and Peter noticing them slipping out. Tom and Meredith take a carriage ride, and Tom confides to Meredith about having run into Marge. He tells Meredith, “I look at you now and I see her face,” implying that he does not want to pursue anything romantic with her. Meredith says she understands and puts her head on his shoulder, and when they arrive at her house she asks him if he will meet her the following day to say goodbye properly. Agreeing, he invites her to the same cafe at which he agreed to meet Peter and Marge, at the same time. The following morning, Tom watches Meredith at the cafe from above, and then sees Peter and Marge arrive at the cafe. Marge, Peter and Meredith greet one another and Meredith explains that she was at the opera with Dickie, growing anxious at the sight of Marge, Dickie’s ex. Tom manages to keep the ghost of Dickie alive by staging this run-in between Meredith and Marge, but what they do not know is that Meredith thinks that Tom is Dickie. Meredith comforts Marge by telling her that she thinks Dickie plans to return to her, and when Meredith wonders if Dickie arranged for them to run into each other, Peter assures her that they are there to meet Tom Ripley. As Meredith departs, she assures Marge that “nothing untoward happened,” and that nothing should prevent Marge from taking Dickie back.
Tom arrives at the cafe just as Meredith leaves, and Marge informs Tom that Dickie was at the opera the previous night. Tom feigns surprise and then delight at Marge’s prediction that Dickie is going to return home soon. Jokingly, Tom says he feels guilty, because “whenever Dickie does something, I feel guilty.”
Analysis
This section of the film portrays the final decline in Dickie and Tom’s friendship. Dickie continues to chip away at Tom’s identity, gleaning that he is not a Princeton graduate as he said he was, and that he does not actually like jazz. The irony of these moments is that Dickie is not angry at all, but rather expected it all along. He tells Tom that he suspected him of not being a Princeton graduate, because his taste was too good. In an inverse of what one would expect, Tom insists that the wealthy men who went to Princeton, who have “tasted everything,” have lowbrow and brutish tastes. Tom, on the other hand, is much more of an aesthete, and displays a higher level of taste. The irony is that taste is not what helps Tom fit in in high society, but what confirms his outsider status.
While Tom’s unusual behavior and ability to lie and deceive have been mildly unsettling in the previous sections of the film, it is in this chapter that they climax in brutal violence, establishing Tom as the sociopathic protagonist of this psychological thriller. The struggle on the boat represents the central struggle between the two men, with Tom scolding Dickie for his inconsistency and unethical carelessness, and Dickie disparaging Tom for being a low-class “mooch.” It is both Dickie’s invocation of Tom’s lower class and his effeminate behavior that sends Tom over the edge. When Dickie tells Tom he behaves like a little girl, Tom is unable to control his anger. After the first blow to Dickie’s head, Tom feels remorse and attempts to help Dickie, but Dickie is so enraged that he attacks Tom, who bludgeons him to death. Tom’s violence is both in self-defense against Dickie's rage and a way of cleaning up the violent mess he has already made. If he kills Dickie and cons the people on shore, he will not have to face the consequence of having hit Dickie in the head in the first place. Tom follows his own mistakes down curious rabbit holes, continually making conditions worse for himself as a result of his anger and his unsteady grasp on reality and his own identity.
What follows is a fascinating and disconcerting study in compulsive deception, as Tom takes on the identity of Dickie, while also—as Tom—working to maintain the facade that Dickie is still alive. Tom inhabits the role of Dickie almost as an act of devotion. After all, the beginning of the movie saw Tom consistently wanting to become Dickie, to merge with him. In the absence of reciprocity, Tom's murder of the object of his desire allows him to assume his role and thus become closer to his victim and to the man who he feels betrayed him. One of the most curious, and revealing parts of Tom’s deception is how easy it is for him to pull off. When he first returns to the hotel in San Remo, he has no plans to impersonate Dickie, but when the concierge mistakes him for Dickie, he opportunistically sees this as his way out of an impossible situation. Tom’s greatest talent and his greatest flaw are his opportunism. The viewer empathizes with him to a point, as much of his plight seems foisted upon him, but his strategic withholdings are inherently unethical, and are what are consistently getting him into more hot water. If Tom had told the truth to Mr. Greenleaf that he had not gone to Princeton, he would never have gone to Italy and gotten into the mess in the first place. The viewer comes to see Tom as a man incapable of telling the truth, especially about himself.
This portion of the movie shows Tom reconnected with his love of the highbrow culture and more specifically, classical music. When Meredith invites Tom to the opera, Tom is able to experience classical music from the perspective he has always coveted; the box seats whose curtains he once peered through at Carnegie Hall are now accessible to him, because he is forging signatures to receive Dickie’s checks. Having successfully conned his way into the upper class, Tom is afforded the seat at the performance that he always wanted. Music is one of the main ways that Tom feels his class difference, but by inhabiting Dickie’s identity, he can flip this dynamic and enjoy a privilege that he's always desired—to sit in a good seat at the opera. This mirrors the observation Dickie made that Tom has better taste than the men he knows who went to Princeton. Rather unexpectedly, Tom’s highbrow taste is what gives him away as not being from an elite Ivy League university. Thinking that Tom is the jazz loving Dickie, Meredith suspects Tom will not want to go to the opera, and is surprised to find him willing and amenable. Tom’s seat the opera represents his ability to achieve the higher class position he has always longed for; at the same time, he is better able (as compared to Dickie) to appreciate its beauty, because it was not always available to him.
Another significant element of the opera is that the action depicted onstage mirrors the violent tension between Tom and Dickie, as well as Tom’s aspirational standing among people of a higher class. Onstage, two men duel each other, just as Tom and Dickie struggled to dominate one another on the boat. The movie suggests that a motif for Tom is the violent and competitive undercurrent that can exist between two men. In the story of Eugene Onegin, the opera, a young man of humble beginnings attempts to fit in with a wealthy family, just as Tom is a poor man attempting to pass himself off as a wealthy Princeton graduate.
