As you might imagine given cameos from such esteemed directors as Nicholas Ray, Samuel Fuller and Jean Eustache (to say nothing of Easy Rider director Dennis Hopper as Tom Ripley), this is German auteur Wim Wenders’ most new wave-ish movie. Based on Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley’s Game, it hinges on the dissolute American, art dealing and wheeling the vulnerably-ill picture framer Bruno Ganz smack into a murder plot.
Another Hopper, Edward, casts a shadow over Robby Muller’s moody camerawork, while a couple of set pieces – most notably, the train murder – have a Hitchcockian bravado.
As in classic American film noir, the plot defies unentangling, but the movie is carried on style, atmosphere, and vivid, piercing, desperate characters. Highsmith herself blew hot and cold on the results, but she was undoubtedly too close to it; The American Friend is the real deal an authentic neo-noir mittel-European classic.
This screening is in our latest Film Studies series on literary Adaptations, led by Patricia Gruben, who will give a 15-minute introduction.
Patricia Gruben is a filmmaker and former associate professor of film at Simon Fraser University, as well as founder and long-time director of Praxis Centre for Screenwriters (now the Screenwriters Lab at the Whistler Film Festival.) Her films have been screened at TIFF, VIFF, Sundance and the New York Film Festival, and her writing on film has appeared in international academic and popular journals. Her latest film was Heart of Gold.
Superb… Good Highsmith, it’s even better Wenders.
Tom Milne, Time Out
Wim Wenders
Dennis Hopper, Bruno Ganz, Lisa Kreuzer, Gérard Blain, Sam Fuller, Nick Ray, Jean Eustache
Germany/France
1977
In English, French and German with English subtitles
Book Tickets
Saturday March 14
Indigenous & Community Access
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Credits
Producer
Wim Wenders
Screenwriter
Wim Wenders
Cinematography
Robby Müller
Editor
Peter Przygodda
Original Music
Jürgen Knieper
Art Director
Heidi Lüdi, Toni Lüdi
Also in This Series
Film Studies: Adaptations looks at five acclaimed literary texts and the very different challenges they posed to filmmakers.
The English Patient
In the first of a new Film Studies series exploring literary adaptations, director Anthony Minghella tackles Michael Ondatje's challenging, poetic WWII novel about an enigmatic, badly burnt patient with a tragic past. Introduced by Patricia Gruben.
Nomadland
Hamnet director Chloe Zhao picked up one of three Academy Awards (along with Best Picture and Best Actress) in 2021 for this unconventional, compassionate adaptation of Jessica Bruder's nonfiction book, Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century.
The American Friend
Wim Wenders' take on Patricia Highsmith's Ripley's Game is the real deal, an authentic mittel-European neo-noir, with Dennis Hopper as the original American psycho, Tom Ripley. This Film Studies screening is introduced by Patricia Gruben.
