The Talented Mr. Ripley (Film)

The Talented Mr. Ripley (Film) Glossary

Princeton

A prestigious American university.

Insolent

Rude or disrespectful.

Primer

A white substance that you paint on wood or canvases before applying colorful paint. Tom jokes that his pale skin is a "primer" and that he hopes to become tanned, when Dickie calls him out for being so white at the beach.

Like a fog

Difficult to remember.

Vile

Horrible or disgusting.

Park Avenue crowd

Members of the New York City boulevard representing wealth, the elite and the American Dream; extremely wealthy people.

Despicable

Worthy of hatred.

Icebox

A small refrigerator, popular in the 1950s as it revolutionized food storage.

Sordid

Extremely filthy and dirty.

Bewildered

Very confused.

Non Sequitur

A legal term meaning an irrelevant, random or out of the blue statement or question.

A mooch

A person who uses and wastes other people's money.

"Jazz fiend"

Someone who loves jazz.

The Corso

A main street in the center of Rome's historic district.

Not knowing your ass from your elbow

A pejorative, slang term for someone who is dumb or out of touch.

Peeping

Spying on others, often specifically on others' sexual activity.

Demon

An evil spirit that often haunts a soul who has gone to hell, reminding them of their misdeeds.

Michelangelo and Leonardo

Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci were two prominent artists and thinkers from the Italian Renaissance. They were both also known to be homosexuals.

Primitive

Undeveloped, unsophisticated, preliterate, and corase. Often used as a pejorative against non-Western or non-Anglicized cultures.

"See Venice and die"

A reference to the poem "To See Venice and Die" by Herbert Nehrlich about the splendors of travel.