IF LOOKS COULD KILL: Plein Soleil & The Lodger

By Penny Martin, 16:15 Mon 19 May 2008

Film still from Plein Soleil (1960), starring Alan Delon

Film still from Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger (1927)

I was treated to a Lily Cole double bill this week. Well, that's to say I took up two of the flame-haired lovely's recommendations from the Fashion In Film festival's programme: on Tuesday night, Alfred Hitchcock's The Lodger and yesterday Plein Soleil (pictured). I quickly learnt that a silent, feature-length film needs special concentration (the Lodger was released in 1927, before the talkies), but the Edward McKnight Kauffer graphic sequences were splendid and the ivory-faced Ivor Novello as the eponymous villain was mesmerising. But the best bit was watching pianist Stephen Horne improvise live: not once did I see him glance at a score, his eye was on the screen throughout - what a pro!

Though I'd seen Minghella's later version of the first Patricia Highsmith Ripley book, nothing could prepare you for how extraordinarily erotic and charged Plein Soleil is. Writers Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson gave a very interesting introduction to contextualise the clothing and casting of the film. Delon, it turns out, was discovered as a deckchair attendant and possibly a gigolo/rent boy and the audience for Plein Soleil, his first film, would have been fully aware of the seamy implications of his appointment. But it was not just the obsessive focus on Alan Delon's body that give the film its sexual edge, but also its setting. The film made you see Italy through the eyes of an audience unaccustomed to easy air travel and who had never experienced the giddy, sensual heat of the Amalfi coast. Rent it out, I urge you, and enjoy some sexy armchair travel!