Rescued from obscurity by Martin Scorsese, this neglected 1960 French classic might just as easily have been pulled from an alternate universe in which Hitchcock was first incarnated as a member of the French New Wave. Alain Delon plays a young drifter who, jealous of his successful friend, sets out to take his place. Purple Noon is a rarity in that it is a genuinely unpredictable and suspenseful film: Throw in a heavy dose of moral ambiguity, a subtext that raises questions about the nature of identity, stunning cinematography, and a score by Nino Rota that will stay in your head for weeks, and you have the sort of can't-miss rental that doesn't show up too often.
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