The American Friend (1977) [The Criterion Collection]

Wim Wenders pays loving homage to rough-and-tumble Hollywood film noir with The American Friend, a loose adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel Ripley’s Game. Dennis Hopper oozes quirky menace as an amoral American art dealer who entangles a terminally ill German everyman, played by Bruno Ganz, in a seedy criminal underworld as revenge for a personal slight – but when the two become embroiled in an ever-deepening murder plot, they form an unlikely bond. Filmed on location in Hamburg and Paris, with some scenes shot in grimy, late-seventies New York City, Wenders’s international breakout is a stripped-down crime story that mixes West German and American film flavors, and it features cameos by filmmakers Jean Eustache, Samuel Fuller, and Nicholas Ray.

This 1977 Wim Wenders film is an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel Ripley's Game. It stars Dennis Hopper as Tom Ripley, the amoral and lonely antihero Highsmith based five novels upon. Bruno Ganz plays a dying picture framer who is cajoled into murdering a man. Through various circumstances these two men come together, and briefly become friends. This is a thriller, but it's mostly the story of these two men who come to depend on one another for a brief time. Hopper is very touching in this film, conveying Ripley's loneliness in very subtle ways. And Bruno Ganz is even better as the man caught up in something he doesn't understand. And as always with a Wenders film, this is visually beautiful. For fans of Wim Wenders or The Talented Mr. Ripley, this is well worth seeing.

Audio Commentary - this audio commentary, which was recorded in 2002, features director Wim Wenders and the late Dennis Hopper. There is plenty of excellent information about the film's production history – how the rights to Patricia Highsmith's Ripley's Game were secured, how the different locations where key sequences from the film were shot were chosen, how the sound recording was done, etc.) – the casting of Dennis Hopper (John Cassavetes was also considered for the role of Tom Ripley), the original title of the film which was Framed, the film's visual style and atmosphere, some of Robby Müller's more unusual framing choices, the relationships between the main characters, etc.