This film has evaded me for years, but at last I caught up with it. It has on the surface a perfect cast; Bruno Ganz, Dennis Hopper, Lisa Kreuzer, Nicholas Ray, Lou Castel, Jean Eustache, Gerard Blain, Samuel Fuller. It is beautifully filmed in heavy, saturated colours and the running time of well over two hours passes reasonably quickly. Some American focused critics have concentrated a lot on Wim Wenders love of everything American, and yes, I agree up to a certain point. He certainly loved American cinema, but there are definite doubts about further love perhaps better expressed in one of his finest films ' Kings of the Road '. For me despite its prestigious cast ' The American Friend ' basically concentrates on Bruno Ganz and Dennis Hopper. Bruno Ganz plays the part of a ( possibly ) dying man, who because of his illness, and to assure his wife played by the woefully unused Lisa Kreuzer, gets money after his death, joins up with gangsters to kill off people. Despite a lot of rich character development the best scenes are the arguably Hitchcock hommage sequences of murderous intent set in the Paris Metro and on a train to Munich. They are riveting to watch. End of spoilers. Bruno Ganz invests all he can as the ' dying ' man, and what a very great actor he was, but for me the problem was the character of Ripley, quirkily played by a very seedy looking Dennis Hopper in many scenes with a cowboy hat. The film based on a Patricia Highsmith novel has Ripley, her sexually ambiguous ' criminal ' killer hero at its heart. Hopper along with Alain Delon, and Matt Damon have also played Ripley and for me Damon wins hands down. Why ? His ambiguous nature comes out best and is more lethal. Hopper despite his dubious Method acting shows none, and it seems that Wenders was not the director to bring it out. I found Hopper's interpretation to be calculated and shallow, especially in the intense scenes with Ganz where his ' friendship ' could have been more convincing. And yet Wenders take on Patricia Highsmith's work has much to be admired, and the scenes with Ripley and an artist who is supposed to be dead played by Nicholas Ray is a joy to see. To sum up, for me the film is not a total success, but still a must see film. But as I turned off the screen I wondered what Rainer Werner Fassbinder would have made with the same material ( for me the finest of the directors among the New Wave of German cinema in the 1970's. ) I have a guess that it would have been more pared down and perhaps all the better for it. But Wenders my second favourite of the disparate group attempted and produced a glorious ' failure ' which should be seen more often than it is. Once again I saw it in the very late hours of British television without any fanfare, tucked away and fairly hard to find. A pity for those who do not search with a torch through television magazines.
Review of The American Friend
