Der Amerikanische Freund (The American Friend) (1977)

Featured Audience Ratings

• Stella D

  
  beautifully shot and atmospheric thriller based on ripley's game with a great performance by bruno ganz. i admit i found it hard to imagine hopper as ripley but he was quite good too. and it seems to be making a statement about u.s vs. europe. don't trust the americans?… More
  beautifully shot and atmospheric thriller based on ripley's game with a great performance by bruno ganz. i admit i found it hard to imagine hopper as ripley but he was quite good too. and it seems to be making a statement about u.s vs. europe. don't trust the americans? hmm...

• Stephen M

  
  A brilliant art house <i>noir</i> by Wim Wenders, adapted from Patricia Highsmith's <I>Ripley's Game</I>. Bruno Ganz plays Jonathan Zimmermann, a picture framer with an incurable blood disease, whose precariousness of health is manipulated by Dennis… More
  A brilliant art house <i>noir</i> by Wim Wenders, adapted from Patricia Highsmith's <I>Ripley's Game</I>. Bruno Ganz plays Jonathan Zimmermann, a picture framer with an incurable blood disease, whose precariousness of health is manipulated by Dennis Hopper's Tom Ripley, a sociopathic art dealer seeking to recruit a contract killer for a gangland associate. Eager to provide his wife and son with some financial security before his 'imminent' demise, Zimmermann is sucked into the criminal underworld. Wenders' presentation is dazzling enough to prevent us from scrutinising the rather implausible plot too closely. There are a couple of artsy digressions - unfortunate, because Robby Müller's stunning photography ensures that the film would have been just as aesthetically pleasing without them - but, happily, Wenders doesn't let them get in the way of the story. I could have done without some of Hopper's trademark nutty behaviour - he's Dennis Hopper, right! I'll buy the fact that he's crazy sight unseen - but it's fun to see him playing opposite Nicholas Ray, the director who gave him an early break with <I>Rebel Without a Cause</I>. Curiously, the protagonist here is called Zimmerman(n) and the film closes with Ripley mumbling the lyrics to Bob Dylan's <I>I Pity the Poor Immigrant</I>. Coincidence?

• Tim S

  
  Like a lot of Wenders' stuff, I love the way this movie looks, but am still trying to figure out what the fuck was going on in some scenes.

• Sarah G

  
  I watched this film as it was part of the German expressionim era and starring Dennis Hopper. Plus, a young Bruno Ganz as the German picture framer. What I loved was the use of the locationswith the atmospher of the film. From Hamburg to the far end of Germany this creates a unqiue… More
  I watched this film as it was part of the German expressionim era and starring Dennis Hopper. Plus, a young Bruno Ganz as the German picture framer. What I loved was the use of the locationswith the atmospher of the film. From Hamburg to the far end of Germany this creates a unqiue film for me. I enjoyed the use of language withing the film. You have Tom Ripley( played by Dennis Hopper), American and will only speak English but German on some occasions. You also have Bruno Ganz's character and the frenchman( Gerad Blain talking English which i found made the film more familiar to English-speaking countries and certainly you'e able to realte to the character more. Also, you start to understand the impact of the english language, not just through England and America but through Europe. Certainly the plot is done very well in this and the cross- pollination of the two speaking countries is effective in the story progressing. Overall i recomend this movie to people who wouldn't nessacerily watch a foreign film and hopefully they will watch more in the future. A great thriller to watch filled with suspense, intrigue.

• MJS M

  
  Most audiences were first made familiar with the character of Tom Ripley from the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley, but the character really originated in a series of novels by Patricia Highsmith which date back to 1955. The aforementioned film was an adaptation of the first novel,… More
  Most audiences were first made familiar with the character of Tom Ripley from the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley, but the character really originated in a series of novels by Patricia Highsmith which date back to 1955. The aforementioned film was an adaptation of the first novel, this 1977 Wim Wenders film is an adaptation of the third novel, Ripley?s Game (which would be adapted again in 2002). The film mostly follows a character named Jonathan Zimmermann (Bruno Ganz, who would go on to play Hitler in Downfall), who has been diagnosed with a terminal blood disease. He encounters and befriends an American named Tom Ripley (Dennis Hopper) who has connection with the criminal underworld. Soon enough, Tom convinces Zimmermann to take part in a pair of crime assassinations in order to pay for his medical bills. This film?s depiction of the Ripley character differs greatly from the depiction in the Anthony Minghella film which I?ve long been fond of. In that film Matt Damon played Ripley as a bit of a dork, albeit a psychotic dork so desperate to be someone more glamorous than he was that he latched onto and eventually murdered an American playboy on vacation in Italy. Here, well? he?s Dennis Hopper, and he takes on most of the mannerisms you expect Dennis Hopper to have. Gone are the goofy, yet oddly disturbing grins and the creepy stares, in their place is? Dennis Hopper, in a cowboy hat. The performance isn?t completely without its charms (I particularly liked a scene where he lays down on a pool table and takes pictures of himself with a Polaroid), but as a whole I found this Ripley significantly less interesting than the one I was used to. It?s kind of like Going back to the movie Manhunter and seeing Brian Cox play Hannibal Lecture after having scene Anthony Hopkins dominate the role in Silence of the Lambs. Really, I have to say I feel the same way about the rest of the movie, it?s a pretty decent thriller but it didn?t strike me as remotely as interesting as The Talented Mr. Ripley. There is sort of a perverse friendship at the center of it all, but for the most part this is less of a psychological thriller and more of a Hitchcockian thriller and it works at its best during a pair of suspenseful set pieces. Wenders handles these scene very well, though I was surprised at just how pedestrian his style was here, this isn?t anything like the lyrical camera work of his more famous works Wings of Desire and Paris, Texas. I also found aspects of the plot fairly confusing, particularly the workings of the crime syndicate that?s trying to make things happen. So overall, this is a nice little movie that I enjoyed watching, but I don?t think it will stay with me.