About The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999), Anthony Minghella recalled that the “film takes place almost entirely in Italy .  . . .  Coherence is everything in these decisions, just as in architecture.  Form . . . is at least as telling as content.”  Although The Talented Mr. Ripley was shot primarily in Italy, the locations are not, as it were, literal.  The scene where Tom Ripley ascends the Michelangelo steps while nuns are descending the stairs was shot on location, as was the “farcical” scene in the Piazza di Spagna where Tom meets with Meredith Logue, then with Marge Sherwood.  However, Dickie Greenleaf’s Italian home away from home, Mongibello, was shot in Ischia because Mongibello is fictional.  Similarly, the “Hot Vesuvio” jazz scene set in Naples was shot in Rome because there were no appropriate Neapolitan jazz clubs.  The jazz scene is especially striking since although Tom and Dickie sing “Tu Vuo Fa L’Americano” together with Fausto at the club, the dominant music in the film is not Italian but American in which Dickie’s love of American jazz masters such as Charlie Parker is played off Tom’s passion for “high,” European music such as Vivaldi.  At the same time, despite Tom’s palpable disdain for jazz, he croons “My Funny Valentine” at the “Hot Vesuvio” as if he’s channeling Chet Baker and while Dickie accompanies him on tenor sax.  With this musical counterpoint in mind, “Ripley in Italy” examines how, in The Talented Mr. Ripley, Minghella juxtaposes setting and music in order to comment not only on the influence of American popular culture on 1950s, postwar Italy but the improvisatory “form” of jazz opposed to the Old-World “architecture” of Rome and Venice.