The Talented Mr. Ripley (film) locations included the Piazza Navona, the Spanish Steps and Piazza di Spagna in Rome, and the Caffè Florian in the Piazza San Marco, Venice. To prepare for the role of Ripley, Damon lost 30 pounds and learned to play the piano. Jude Law gained weight and learned to play the saxophone for his character; he also broke a rib when he fell backward while filming the murder scene in the boat. Roger Ebert gave the film four-out-of-four stars, calling it "an intelligent thriller" that is "insidious in the way it leads us to identify with Tom Ripley ... He's a
The Piazza Tales that writing stories for magazines inevitably entails, he now "mastered the art of covert insinuation, managing his ironic or unreliable narrators with such subtlety that readers still dispute which (if any) of the narrators voice his own opinions and which are objects of satire or detached psychological interest. Milder describes the stories as predominantly comics, depicting failure, compromise, and misery, with metaphysical concerns almost entirely absent. Biographer Andrew Delbanco cites "The Bell-Tower" as a story that "merited the caution" of Curtis not to accept Melville's submissions for Putnam's too easily. The Piazza Tales The Piazza Tales is a collection of