Themes: Race Against Time, Dangerous Friends, Americans Abroad
Main Cast: Dennis Hopper, Bruno Ganz, Lisa Kreuzer, Gérard Blain, Nicholas Ray
Release Year: 1977
Country: FR/WG
Run Time: 127 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
Wim Wenders' mines Dennis Hopper's real-life experience as a painter and collector in this existential take on the American gangster film based on a Patricia Highsmith novel featuring the notoriously sociopathic Tom Ripley. Hopper stars as the eponymous American, currently a middleman selling the work of American painter Derwatt (Nicholas Ray), who has feigned his own death to increase the value of his paintings. While auctioning this work in Berlin, he meets art restorer Jonathan Zimmerman (Bruno Ganz), who he learns is suffering from an incurable blood disease. When a shady friend (Gerard Blain) requires Ripley to find a "clean" non-professional to do a contract hit in order to pay off a debt, even he is reluctant. But he quickly realizes that the physically vulnerable Jonathan would be perfect for the job, and tries to get him to accept by employing various subterfuges to persuade him that his condition is even worse than it is. For his part, Blain guarantees the restorer that his family will be financially secure for life, and a deal is struck. As usual, nothing works out quite as expected. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
Review
Wenders homage to the American noir includes cameos by two of the genre's most significant figures, Nicholas Ray and Sam Fuller, and stars actor and director Dennis Hopper, whose life and career perhaps most perfectly embody the idiom's celebration of self-destruction. The doppelgänger motif, which threads through Highsmith's work, perhaps most familiar from Hitchcock's version of Strangers on a Train (1951), is also the dominant metaphor of Wenders' film, but in keeping with the director's characteristic ambiguity, the difference between Ripley and his victim are less distinct and sharp-edged here, as the cold-blooded artmonger actually shows some compassion, and the upstanding Zimmerman displays a capacity for evil. Despite the linear plot, the film, like much of the director's work, is suffused with a sense of contingency and randomness, placing a scrim of philosophical detachment between the audience and the drama's doomed characters. Hopper, then in extremely ill health, gives one of the most touching, least flamboyant performances of his career, and Ganz is equally effective as the ailing, anxious artisan. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
Samuel Fuller - American Mobster; Peter Lilienthal - Marcangelo; Daniel Schmid - Ingraham; Lou Castel - Rodolphe; Jean Eustache - Friendly Man; Rosemarie Heinikel; Sandy Whitelaw - Doctor in Paris; Rudolf Schundler - Gantner; Wim Wenders - Bandaged Man
Credit
Sickerts - Art Director, Wim Wenders - Director, Peter Przygodda - Editor, Jürgen Knieper - Composer (Music Score), Robby Müller - Cinematographer, Wim Wenders - Screenwriter, Patricia Highsmith - Book Author
In A Girl and a Gun: The Complete Guide to Film Noir, David N. Meyer says, "Though the plot may not make a whole lot of sense the first time around — and the thick European accents of a couple of the major actors doesn't help — The American Friend is worth the effort. Few movies from any era or genre offer such rich characters, realistic human relationships, gripping action sequences, or sly humor." [1] The film was also entered into the 1977 Cannes Film Festival.[2]
Highsmith herself had mixed feelings about the film, however; she complimented its "stylishness", but disliked its characterization of Ripley ("Those aren't my words", she said in a 1987 interview.[3])
