THE AMERICAN FRIEND Movie Review

Der Amerikanische Freund

Bruno Ganz is Jonathan, a mild-mannered picture framer, originally Swiss but living in Germany, who discovers that his rare blood disease will result in a death sentence. At the same time, a mysterious American art dealer and all-around shady profiteer named Ripley (Dennis Hopper) has a friend who wants a hit performed on a gangster, pointing out to Jonathan what an ideal assassin a doomed man such as he would make. That's just the premise around which Wim Wenders constructs this elegant but sometimes impenetrable puzzle of a film, based on the novel Ripley's Game by Strangers on a Train author Patricia Highsmith. Cinematographer Robby Müller's deeply saturated color images give The American Friend an ominousness and appropriate sense of dread even when the plot is opaque. But the cameo appearances by a host a directors that Wenders admires—Nicholas Ray, Samuel Fuller, Jean Eustache, Daniel Schmid—seem gratuitous at best; at worst they are premature and self-congratulatory comparisons. What carries the picture, as is so often the case in anything in which he appears, is the quiet and utterly assured intelligence of Bruno Ganz's performance. Note: the character of Tom Ripley—this time played by Alain Delon—made an appearance in a remarkable French film that was recently restored and reissued: René Clement's 1960 Purple Noon.

NEXT STOP … The Goalie's Anxiety at the Penalty Kick, Kings of the Road, Strangers on a Train

1977 127m/C FR GE Bruno Ganz, Dennis Hopper, Elisabeth Kreuzer, Gerard Blain, Jean Eustache, Samuel Fuller, Nicholas Ray, Daniel Schmid, Wim Wenders; D: Wim Wenders; W: Wim Wenders; C: Robby Muller; M: Jurgen Knieper. VHS, LV FCT, GLV, TPV