Robert Elswit's B&W Cinematography for 'Ripley'

Andrew Scott as Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley in Ripley

SPOILER ALERT: There are no spoilers in this post. I've policed myself. You're welcome.

I might have mentioned once or twice over the years that I like black-and-white. Also that movies can be a great resource for calibrating your feel for tonal qualities, and learning what to look for. So from time to time people alert me to new movies in B&W—Alexander Payne's Nebraska, from 2013; Joel Coen's The Tragedy of MacBeth from 2021; George Clooney's Good Night and Good Luck from 2005, and many more. This week I watched Ripley, an eight-episode made-for-streaming show from Netflix released just this Spring.

It is, to begin with, a terrific work of art. I found it far superior to the 1999 movie The Talented Mr. Ripley, made from the Patricia Highsmith novel of the same name. I found that one because I watched most of Philip Seymour Hoffman's movies after he died of an overdose in 2014. But despite Hoffman's superlative turn in the role of Freddie Miles in the 1999 film, Eliot Sumner (the child of musician Sting and actress Trudie Styler) brings even more to the role in Ripley. Very high praise.

Not that I had an entirely positive first impression. The limited series centers around that beloved darling of pop culture, the murdering sociopath; and there's no relief. We see everything from his perspective, meaning there is almost no one to identify with or root for. I clung to the film's few slim reeds—the businessman father, the French detective—hoping for a hero.

My knee-jerk first reaction to the B&W was that it looks digital, too crisp, with depressed midtones, empty shadows, and, sometimes, those glarey leached-out highlights that we all love in digital. (Sorry about the sarcasm.) I thought the tones wrong for 1961, when the movie was set. But after rewatching clips from Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal from 1957, John Huston's The Misfits from 1961, and Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho from 1960, I decided I was wrong.

I needn't have worried anyway. I wasn't even all the way through the first episode when I realized that the tonal qualities had to be an artistic choice. And sure enough. The cinematographer turned out to be Robert Elswit, a Hollywood heavy hitter with big-time movies to his credit, such as There Will Be Blood as well as many of Paul Thomas Anderson's other films, The Bourne Legacy, TV movies like Steel Magnolias, and the aforementioned Good Night and Good Luck. Elswit worked with the director of Ripley, Steven Zaillian, once before, in 2016, on an episode of the underrated drama The Night Of.

Once I got over my prejudices, I found nothing but enjoyment in the visuals. They're a rich feast. The cinematography is masterly, and it's an integral component of the film's mood, feel, and storytelling. It's virtually as good as another character in the drama. I can't say I wasn't piqued from time to time by some of the choices, but it's worth watching just for the camerawork. If you like film noir, you'll love this, and not just for the macabre, hardboiled, cynical story.

There's a lot online to read about this eight-part limited series. Reviews, explanations of the ending, articles about the cinematography and its look, and about Patricia Highsmith and other movies made from her "Ripliad" books (this is at least the third direct treatment of The Talented Mr. Ripley).

The story is dark, and ends...well, I promised not to say. But worth seeing for the B&W alone, no question.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Jon Hallberg: "I couldn't agree more! I absolutely loved the cinematography. Every frame was beautifully, thoughtfully composed. (I was tempted to hit pause on multiple occasions, just to admire the compositions.) One of my all-time favorite B&W films is Ida, from 2014. David Denby in The New Yorker rightly called it 'a masterpiece.' It, too, is an absolute visual feast."

Bob Keefer: "One of my favorite reactions to the new Ripley comes from Jerry Saltz, senior art critic at New York magazine. He said on Instagram: 'I know it is great and gorgeous but the story makes me so unnerved I cannot watch it. Watched the first episode jumping out of my skin—yelling at the TV.' Me, I loved it—the photography is incredibly beautiful and the story is wonderfully creepy, living up to Highsmith's original—and I plan to watch it again soon."

aaron c greenman: "I enjoyed the series, but found the camera angles and style a little too self-conscious, to the point where they were sometimes distracting to the storyline. And I agree something filmed in high definition video is too detailed and contrasty to not be distracting.

"My all-time favorite black-and-white movie is still Ida. I used to play a game with myself watching it by making a shutter clicking noise with my mouth every time I thought the moment was a beautiful black-and-white photograph, and it was so often I stopped counting. And for some reason in Ida it really serves the setting and storyline."

Mike replies: I really need to see Ida. I've been meaning to for years.

Comments

[Dan Khong]

I have been watching some old B&W WW2 movies made in the 50's and 60's on YouTube and I know what you mean.

[Jeff]

Mike, you probably already saw the Vanity Fair article, in which the Director and Elswit discuss individual scene choices.

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/ripley-netflix-shot-list-awards-insider

Also, one can never be too careful about genders and pronouns these days. Seems Eliot Sumner might prefer “child” rather than “son.”

[C Jacobs]

Your review missed the importance of Caravaggio - and mentioning this is not a spoiler. We all know you like B&W and that you like Caravaggio. One legacy of Caravaggio's chiaroscuro look is B&W film noir. A quick web search notes that Coppola's 'The Godfather' had a Caravaggio look. Was this an opportunity missed? Would modern digital film and streaming be able to do this justice ?

[rusty]

I quit at episode 5 (a shade too dark emotionally) but will return to this thanks to you. I very much liked the cinematography though. There is film noir type shot at the link in the 2024 challenge folder that I made recently.

[Lothar Adler]

Would it be possible for you to describe in words this tonal value characteristic that you very much appreciated in the film examples mentioned?
I don't mean poetically, but rather technically (in the past it would have been in the field of densitometry).
Then it would be easier to design an individual correction curve in a more targeted way, which could then be routinely used as a starting point in the image editing program.
Of course, I could create a curve myself, but since we're so cozy together right now ... (smile).
And it's also about the different thoughts, the philosophy about the tonal values, - beyond the statement that it's just personal taste.
There must be a reason why you particularly like the tonal values of these films, which also span a period of several decades and are therefore not a current fad. And what's more, they don't look like Henry Wessel photos at all!

[Check out a post called "B&W Over the Years":

https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2022/05/bw-over-the-years.html

--Mike]

[Kye Wood]

The top photograph on this post with the caption"Andrew Scott as Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley in Ripley"... I genuinely hate it.

Rarely have I had such a visceral reaction to a photo. For some reason, my brain is screaming FAKE!

For the blacks to be so close to black, my eyes are expecting the whites to be either burnt out here and there, or at least really close to burning out.

It looks to my eyes, like a colour photo was converted to HDR (poorly), and then the blacks were compressed. I would struggle to enjoy a film shot like this. The aesthetic is just too distracting.

Shrug.

[Well take a look at the trailer, Kye—it's a better sampler. I believe that illustration was an on-set still shot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ri2biYLeaI

—Mike]

[William Lloyd]

You may want to look at "Ida" a 2013 B&W movie by Pawel Pawlikowski about a young novice about to take her vows in 1960's Poland. Stunning, gorgeous picture with an eye opening look at cultural influences behind the Iron Curtain.
A time and a place that was made for B&W.

[Mike Plews]

Check out The Lighthouse. Amazing photography. Super XX, old Baltar lenses, very cool.

[Dierk]

Fully ACK - and this guy even gets away with a beautiful Leica… The cinematography made me want to go to see this very spot in Italy - just fearing it could happen to shout out „Man, this landscape‘s got colour in it!“ Like some would do when first seeing the Valley of the Yosemite after only having known the photographs of Carleton Watkins and Ansel Adams…

[Kye Wood]

RE
[Well take a look at the trailer, Kye—it's a better sampler. I believe that illustration was an on-set still shot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ri2biYLeaI

—Mike]

So - I watched the trailer.

I finally figured out what the issue is.
It's two things.

Thing 1. They're all too sharp. Like 4K video sharp. Which is distracting because it's pointless detail.
And didn't jump off the screen in any other black and white film I've ever enjoyed.

Thing 2. Blacks are too black. Maybe it's just too much contrast, which I'm experiencing as too black a black.

There's a balanced soft detail in classic black and white. It makes the fact that it's black and white disappear within minutes. But this hyper-detailed black and white just remains distracting.

But if you love it, good for you I say.

[I didn't say I love it. It's not my kind of black-and-white. I said I accepted it as an artistic choice on the part of the cinematographer, who knows what he's doing. Maybe you need to watch the story, which is about a deeply sick main character and his vile and morally depraved actions. The story is sad and bleak, and creepy, and the cinematographer's and director's choices are intended to heighten that, and in my judgement they do so effectively. YMMV, and that's fine. --Mike]

[Nanci Heights]

There's another Ripley movie unknown to most American viewers, and it's a great watch, although not in b&w:
Purple Noon, 1960, directed by René Clément and starring gorgeous Alain Delon... oh my god, he's gorgeous!

[ronin]

Rather than being critical of how the blackandwhiteness was pure, I ended up paying more attention to the actual compositions that happened to be in blackandwhite. I thought them superb, adding much to the mood and setting.

BTW, Hoffman's rendering of Freddie was much closer to that of Highsmith's character- a loud, brash, portly "bear of a man" American who wore flashy shirts, and not a proto-emo spooky English dude.

[Yes, and Hoffman was always brilliant. There are lots of good things about the earlier movie. I can't help feeling, though, that the two main characters would have been better reversed—wouldn't Matt Damon as Dickie and Jude Law as Tom have been better? I think I might read the book to see how it differs from the movies.

The whole overt gay theme in the earlier movie bugs me, because I tend to find the ol' "gay villain" trope sort of stereotypical and tiresome. People don't become serial killers because they're gay. I still don't understand why Tom kills Peter at the end of the 1999 movie unless, it's just a blunt exegesis of "he's a serial killer so there he goes again killing people serially."

Leaving all that ambiguous in the new series is much better IMHO--Andrew Scott has said that he didn't want his Tom to be easily put in a standard box. His Tom doesn't really understand his own motives, and he embodies the conflicting motives of a narcissistic psychopath struggling with identity and confusing it with aspirational social mobility much better than Matt Damon's Tom does. You get the sense that his sexuality is amorphous and rather beside the point--he plays the gay angle when it suits him, for instance in playing to Marge's suspicions of why Dickie left her, but he's acting/lying just as he does in everything. The only thing he really lusts after is to be somebody he's not.

It might be true that Steven Zaillian wrote into the new movie more than is specified in the original novel, but he sure does a good job of it. Note the huge differences between the depictions of the murder in the motorboat! Which is better? Just the scene of Marge and Tom when Tom is considering silencing her is much better done in the 2024 version. It's more menacing and her incidental salvation is much more organic--it's merely because she reveals that she's drawn the wrong conclusion from the incriminating evidence.

The new series is psychologically much richer in my view. Maybe it's just that it has so much more time to underline all the plot points more clearly and develop the characters better. And it has time to linger on such things as the creepiness of Roman statuary, the details of Caravaggio paintings, and Tom looking unblinkingly at himself in mirrors wondering who's looking back at him. (And that damn elevator going up and down and the weird cat watching it.)

And it could be that I like the new interpretation better merely because I saw it first. :-) --Mike]

[Sean]

Two problems I couldn’t get past:

I like Scott as an actor, but I found his Ripley charmless, and a charmless conman is akin to an unlovable Casanova.

Tom is 25 in the book, and maybe it’s because I left home for good at 17, but I couldn’t escape knowing that Scott and Flynn are in their 40s, which made the whole retrieve-my-wandering-son premise hard to swallow.

[Yes that's an excellent point, about the charmless con man. And about the ages. One of the places the 2024 version stumbles is that we're just not quite sure why Dickie keeps Tom around in the first place. Conversely, one of the strongest small points about the 1999 version is how Jude Law plays Dickie shifting his attention from Tom to Freddie when Freddie shows up, and how dismayed Tom is at that—and Marge's speech pointing it out. That's very true to the way such people can be. They know how to treat you exactly how you want to be treated, and the only problem with that is that they're not sincere. --Mike]

[Jack Mac]

How many readers told you to look at this series?
It’s the composition I thought was great. Tonal quality was secondary.

[Kye Wood]

When I referred to You, in If you love it, I was referring to the general population. Not the authors of photography blogs.

[Kye Wood]

Is the real allure of B&W film and photography linked to how we dream and visualise a story we hear or read?

I feel B&W is easier to digest and experience because my minds eye is in essence, a monochromatic generator of images during dreaming, reading and listening.

Without the distraction of colour, I can experience B&W more readily and more deeply.

[Gary]

I almost didn't watch the new "Ripley" because of Peggy Noonan's comments in WSJ. Noonan is a wise woman whose writing I admire. She is a political columnist and not a movie reviewer, but I usually trust her observations. The column was entitled, "The uglification of everything." Here are some quotes:

"You remember the 1999 movie 'The Talented Mr. Ripley,' from the Patricia Highsmith novel. It was fabulous—mysteries, murders, a sociopath scheming his way among high-class expats on the Italian Riviera. ... The director, Anthony Minghella, deliberately showed you pretty shiny things while taking you on a journey to a heart of darkness.

"There’s a new version, a streaming series from Netflix, called “Ripley.” I turned to it eagerly and watched with puzzlement. It is unrelievedly ugly. Grimy, gloomy, grim. Tom Ripley is now charmless, a pale and watchful slug slithering through ancient rooms.

"The ugliness seemed a deliberate artistic decision, as did the air of constant menace, as if we all know life is never nice."

[James]

Have you seen The Girl on the Bridge? Black and white movie from 2000. Retro new wave.

[Richard Geltman]

The detective is not French but Italian- Inspector Roverini.

[Stan B.]

Couldn't sit through it, for some of the same reasons some astute commenters have already mentioned. Just got tired, annoyed, frustrated, waiting for Ripley to find a personality.

[Stan B.]

BTW- One can't talk about the greatest B&W films of all time without mentioning Eraserhead, a movie that literally takes one to a parallel world through the medium of B&W film.

[James]

It's much closer in tone to the actual Patricia Highsmith novel(s) it's based on than the Minghella version. The Tom Ripley character is a very close approximation of the character in the novel(s). I'm not saying that's a good thing or a bad one. For example, I find Stanley Kubrick's The Shining far superior to the Stephen King book (which admittedly I got bored with and didn't finish). I didn't particularly like the Minghella version. To me he was just remaking Purple Noon with a bigger budget.

As for the cinematography, it's very good if very digital. I thought 8 episodes was a bit too much but I do understand to some degree the languorous pace. I happen to love Film Noir. I think cinematography is about a good as an approximation of that style as you can get with digital. Anyone wanting to watch great Film Noir cinematography should go with:

Out of the Past
The Killing
Double Indemnity
The Sweet Smell of Success
Touch of Evil
The Big Combo

Anything shot by Nicola Musuraca. James Wong Howe is another great one. Seconds which was one of the last B/W studio films of the 60's a stunning example of James Wong Howe's cinematography.

[Patrick Perez]

@Richard Geltman, while watching Ripley, I commented to my wife that the actor playing Inspector Roverini was the Italian Jean Reno. It was meant as a positive.

I loved the show, especially for the photography, although I frequently noticed digitally replaced backgrounds, but at least done tastefully.

Patrick

[nlvivar]

Timely post. The most recent Japanese Godzilla movie (Godzilla Minus One) was recently released on streaming in both color and black-and-white. I missed them in the theaters, so I'm happy I can watch them at home now.

They were talking about special black-and-white theater screenings this summer.

[ScottF]

I was going to post about "Godzilla Minus One" (recently released on Netflix) and "Godzilla Minus One Minus Color" (apparently on Netflix later in the summer).

If you search "godzilla minus one minus color comparison" you can see a shot showing "color", "minus color" and desaturated, a link to source is here: https://x.com/titangoji/status/1747804686709575854

Similarly, "Mad Max: Fury Road" had a black and white version, and the just released "Furiosa: a Mad Max story" also has a black and white version coming later.

As far as I know in all cases the conversion has been done "by hand".

[Christopher Perez]

Sorry to ask so late into the game, but something is nagging me.

When printing B&W stills the mid-tones are raised above a muddy mess as an inherent part of the process.

How did BW tonality "work" in film? Is the film used for generating the positive made to render like emulsion on paper? Or did they light/expose things "properly" on set to get the tonal ranges they did (ie: pre-visualize the final result taking into account what the films would do)?