The American Friend [1977] [DVD]

This is not a film of Highsmith's book,Ripley's Game,for that you need to go to the later version with Malkovitch as Ripley.This is inspired by that book,creating it's atmosphere and characterisation with a shift into the central consciousness of professional framemaker Jonathan(Bruno Ganz),who is the heart and soul of the film,away from Ripley(Hopper) who merely pulls the strings.This film is predominantly set in Europe,with an American unifying aesthetic.Jonathan has been diagnosed with terminal leukaemia and following a chance encounter with the enigmatic Ripley he finds a way to ensure a stable future for his family. Ganz suggests the internal conflict with his moral beliefs and loving family outlook.He is lured in by the bait Raul Pinot (Blain) offers him :new tests in the American Hospital in Paris by a top specialist. Ripley has been the catalyst for this new adventurous, amoral life,following a slight he receives from Zimmerman.Ripley is a loner cowboy adrift in Hamburg,consumed with existential angst. He is drawn towards Zimmerman's hard-working honesty and warm family home. In an early scene Ripley records his thoughts in a taped diary:"There is nothing to fear but fear itself...I know less and less about who I am or who anybody else is".Hopper has never been better or more restrained and calm.

There are two marvellous set-pieces set on trains.The first thriller sequence is in a subway station depicting Jonathan's inept murder of an underworld figure. The second set on a moving train where he is joined surprisingly by Ripley, is worthy of Hitchcock. There is a lot of physical force and suspense,the use of garrotting and bodies pushed out of trains. There is a lot of black humour in a scene with tickets.Also there is a homage to American film noir (cf two directors,Ray and Fuller cast as conmen and criminals),also the role of Ripley as a sleazy conman with mob connections.Ripley shows his humanity by wanting to be Jonathan's `American friend'.There is great chemistry between the two leads.What is stressed is everybody's moral ambivalence. The truly interesting expressionist quality of the cinematography,unusual use of colour and lighting,with cityscapes bathed in dark blues and dark greens and a somewhat faded background palette overlaid with strikingly bright and saturated primary colours for particular objects or costumes.There is the influence of Edward Hopper on the framing and camera angles,with Knieper's brooding score to suggest the intensity and danger round every corner of the seedy industrial backlots of Hamburg.There are a lot of motifs centred around picture slides and moving pictures which figure in gift exchange between the `friends' His wife Erica(excellent Kreuzer) is aware Jonathan is not giving her the whole picture:"I don't even want to know what you do with your American friend".The corruptive influence of American movies is a major theme. This will be seen as one of Wender's major films with Alice in the Cities and Kings of the Road.

I absolutely adore the books of Patricia Highsmith and have read her Ripley stories over and over again. Whenever I do it is a vision of Dennis Hopper I see continuely as I read.
'American Friend' is a colossus of a film-Wim Wenders, the Director's wondrous shining achievement. Of course he went on to create in other movies more moments of film wise brilliance but 'American Friend' was certaily a very bright spot in his career.
Dennis Hopper is superb as Ripley- the silences in his performance are shattering moments that convey in the face of the man his every Ripley thought.
Bruno Ganz too excels. He is also a fine actor who went to greater heights, especially his compelling study of Hitler in his last days in 'Downfall'. Nicholas Ray, the Director of Hopper's first film 'Rebel without a Cause' is excellent too, cast as the mysterious painter/forger Derwatt.
A very eerie aspect of the film is the shadow of the Twin Towers used at the beginning and end of the film.
It's Dennis Hopper's film all the way, but, there is no slouching from the other members of the cast.
Final opinion is that the film is a towering achievement in the world of cinema and a lasting tribute to Patricia Highsmith, Bruno Ganz, Wim Wenders but above all, the lovely much missed man for all seasons-Dennis Hopper.

From the days before foreign cinema/arthouse movies became big business and were still a fit playground for non-mainstream imaginations instead of auditions for Hollywood (although this in fact was just such a showpiece for Wenders), Wim Wenders take on Patricia Highsmith's Ripley's Game has lost little of its power and allure over the past quarter of a century. A Franco-German-American co-production - a concoction which would now spell a massively compromised disaster - it uses its varied cultural backgrounds rather than allowing itself to be stifled by them as the possibly terminally ill (German) Ganz is covertly influenced by (American) Hopper's crooked art dealer to take a (French) gangster's lucrative offer to perform 'one - maybe two' contract killings.

The film buff references are there, but filtered through European cinema as much as Hollywood noir - the hero has tests at the hospital Oanassis and Jean Gabin died, Jurgen Knieper's music takes its lead from Bernard Herrmann scored for harmonica and synth and the gangsters are played by a mixture of German, French and American directors. Additionally, the then on the brink of critical rediscovery Nicholas Ray is cleverly cast as a painter everyone thinks is dead and who uses the assumption to up the prices of the multiple copies of his paintings he churns out.

While such self-conscious touches are often used to hide a lack of imagination or personal vision, this is very much Wenders' film and one with its own distinct identity. Ray's 'life after death' is less a conceit of casting than a reflection on Ganz's predicament as part of the old world (he used to restore works of art) caught in a world being rebuilt around him in which he has no place or future. Where Ray filters his art through pragmatism and survives (itself a perfect metaphor for his Hollywood career), Ganz is too caught up in his own mortality, his desperate need to be certain of his fate turning into a subtly conveyed love affair with his own death.

What's more, this is a film where everything fits. Hopper's early ramblings into his pocket tape recorder in an attempt to remind himself of the person he's forgotten he ever was after years of lying to others at first seem a self-indulgence, but his words at the beginning of the film - "We have nothing to fear but fear itself" - provide the motivation for Ganz's actions, as the picture framer who constantly puts himself in the frame (both literally and figuratively) allows his paranoia over his disease to set him on the road to his rendezvous with death.

As a thriller it has two great setpieces - Ganz's clumsy stalking of his first assignment on the Metro and a double-killing gone wrong on a train that is real edge of seat stuff. By comparison, the finale loses its way somewhat, with the characters giving into both their and the situation's absurdity with a giggling fit. Despite this, the film doesn't disappoint, holding the attention throughout its deliberate and sometimes esoteric build-up and staying in the memory long after it has finished. One of the best foreign films of the seventies and still Wenders most completely satisfying work to date, it's well worth a second (or even first) look.

Anchor Bay's deleted DVD is well worth tracking down - as well as a good widescreen transfer of the film that makes the most of Wenders' and cinematographer Robby Muller's ambitious use of colour and sweeping camera movements, it boasts an excellent extras package, including audio commentary, 30 minutes of deleted scenes, outtakes and behind the scenes footage and the film's trailer.