Der amerikanische Freund

Plot synopsis:
Tom Ripley (Dennis Hopper) is a wealthy American living in Hamburg, Germany. He is involved in an artwork forgery scheme, in which he appears at auctions to bid on forged paintings produced by an accomplice and artificially drives up the price. At one of these auctions, he is introduced to Jonathan Zimmermann (Bruno Ganz), a picture framer who is dying of a rare and unspecified blood disease. Zimmermann refuses to shake Ripley's hand when introduced, coldly saying "I've heard of you" before walking away.
A French criminal named Raoul Minot (Gérard Blain) asks Ripley to murder a rival gangster. Ripley declines, but in order to get even for Zimmermann's slight, suggests Minot use Zimmermann for the job. Ripley spreads rumors that Zimmerman's illness has become suddenly far more serious. Minot offers Zimmerman a great deal of money to kill the gangster. Zimmermann initially turns Minot down, but becomes greatly distressed by the thought that he may not have long to live and wants to provide for his wife and son. He agrees with Minot to come to France for a second medical opinion. Minot arranges to have the results falsified to make Zimmermann expect the worst. Zimmermann agrees to shoot the gangster in a Paris Métro station. Ripley visits Zimmermann in his shop before and after the shooting to get a picture framed. Zimmerman is unaware of Ripley's involvement in the murder of the gangster, and the two begin to form a bond.
Minot visits Ripley again to report his satisfaction with Zimmermann's performance. Ripley, who has grown to like Zimmerman, is appalled when Minot says he plans to have him murder another rival gangster, this time on a speeding train using a garrote. Before Zimmermann can complete the murder, the bodyguard of the second target catches Zimmermann. Ripley appears on the train and overpowers him. Both Zimmermann and Ripley execute the target as well as a bodyguard. Ripley and Zimmermann meet outside and Ripley confesses to his role in suggesting him to Minot, and declines Zimmermann's suggestion to keep half of the money for the second hit. Ripley advises Zimmermann to tell Minot that he did the job on the train alone. Back home, Zimmermann argues with his wife, Marianne, who does not believe his stories of being paid to undergo experimental treatments.
Zimmermann has been receiving mysterious phone calls and suspects the Mafia is trying to find him. His fears grow worse when Minot tells him that his own flat was recently bombed. Ripley picks up Zimmermann and they drive to his mansion to wait for the assassins Ripley expects to appear. Ripley and Zimmermann ambush and kill the assassins. Ripley piles their bodies into the ambulance in which they arrived. Before he and Zimmermann can leave to dispose of the bodies, Marianne appears and tells Zimmermann that he was deceived by the altered medical reports. Ripley explains that she and her husband can settle matters later, but now they need to dispose of the bodies. They drive to the sea, Ripley in the ambulance and Marianne driving her husband in their car. On an isolated beach, Ripley douses the ambulance with gasoline and sets fire to it. Watching him, Zimmerman drives away with Marianne, abandoning Ripley. Moments later, he has an unexplained medical attack and dies at the side of the road. Ripley watches from the beach and says: "We made it anyway, Jonathan. Be careful."

Tags: bleak, cult, neo noir, murder

Review:
Jonathan Zimmerman (Bruno Ganz) is an easy going Swiss picture framer living in Germany who believes he is dying from a rare blood disease.
When he makes the acquaintance of Tom Ripley (Dennis Hopper), an art dealer of dubious reputation, he is faced with a profound moral question.
Based on the novel Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith, Wim Wenders The American Friend is a probing character study of two very different men, one a solitary high stakes adventurer, the other a staid family man grown desperate by his circumstances.
The American Friend avoids the temptation to be simply another film noir thriller or a good versus evil escapade, showing fully realized human beings who have thoughts and feelings we can understand even when we strongly disapprove of their actions.
Sure it is slow, and bound to frustrate those with MTV-type attention spans, but bear with it, and you will be rewarded.Bruno Ganz is first rate as the picture-framer turned reluctant hitman, and Dennis Hopper, who is often ridiculed for his over the top self parodic "crazy guy" roles, is quietly impressive as the enigmatic, almost poetic Ripley.
The AMERICAN FRIENDThe fine German director Wim Wenders is responsible for this film.
(His performance is soooo subdued it can make you antsy and annoyed, especially when you know Hopper is around somewhere).Anyway, when the other shady characters in the movie learn of Ganz's condition they play upon his weakness to manipulate him into taking risks with the gangsters they deal with.
This 1977 Wim Wenders film is an adaptation of the Patricia Highsmith novel Ripley's Game.
Wim Wenders' tribute to American film noir, with cameos for two great American directors, Sam Fuller and Nicholas Ray, and boasting the most imaginative cinematography ever and the most beautifully ominous music, is finally available in widescreen enhanced DVD.
Jonathan (Bruno Ganz), not Ripley himself (Dennis Hopper) is the real protagonist.
Wim Wenders is one of my favorite filmmakers, and like Scorsese and Tavernier, he is a world-class cinephile, as much in love with watching movies as he is making them.
The main theme of the film is complicity, and the sub-text is the thin veneer of morality that lies across the surface of most respectable people, which can be more brittle than we imagine and under stress can reveal a spider's web of myriad cracks which quickly reduce the most smoothly groomed personality to a crinkled mass, like a shattered mirror which hangs on in its frame and refuses to drop.
Ripley is played with subtlety and genius by Dennis Hopper, as an amiable American in a cowboy hat with a worm in his soul, but who beneath the criminal levels of his personality has an overwhelming and desperate craving for a real friend who is a nice person.
A thriller?Only because it's adapted from a Patricia HIghsmith's novel,and because this friend is none other than Thomas Ripley the criminal dandy.It's an adaptation of "Ripley's games" but it also alludes to the former "Ripley goes underground" when it alludes to fake paintings.Although the treatment may seem "modern",the novel's main topic has been kept:when you've got a lethal disease ,and when you leave behind a wife and a young boy,is it a crime to slay a criminal?Only strong actors could pull it off,and here we deal with Bruno Ganz and Dennis Hopper:the former,now sixty,was playing "Faust" on stage a few months ago,21 hours with an intermission (!)He was already one of the best German actors at the time.He 's Jonathan,a poor lad who's got nothing to lose.Wenders does wonders when he shows his antihero overwhelmed by an inhumane urban environment,particularly in the spectacular metro (French subway) scene.Hopper is also very effective ,a much better Ripley than Delon's in "purple noon" (plein soleil),because he's American after all.He gives a stunning performance,now threatening,now comforting,finally giving support to the unfortunate Jonathan.You should see him humming Dylan's "I pity the poor immigrant" and the Beatles' "Drive my car".The cast is very odd:outside the two leads,we find Gérard Blain,who was twice Chabrol's star (les cousins,le beau serge) and had fallen into oblivion ,at least in France-he recently died.His reappearance in the middle of such a crepuscular thriller adds to the doomed atmosphere.And that's not all:Samuel Fuller,who was to direct a movie in France several years later("les voleurs de la nuit "-thieves after dark- not on a par with his best American movies like "shock corridor" or "pick up on south street")and Nicholas Ray whose last days Wenders filmed soon after(some critics called it a "bad taste " work)in "Nick's movie are also part of this strange gathering.Wenders' most accessible movie,the less pretentious,and along with "Strangers on a train" the best adaptation of Patricia Highsmith for the screen..
Adapting Patricia Highsmith's novel 'Ripley's Game' for the big screen, Wim Wenders grafts his patented Euro-road film style to a convoluted crime drama concerning a Hamburg artist (Bruno Ganz) with a rare blood disease, persuaded by one gangster to murder another.
The reference to other films, most notably the Paris metro-scenes in Bresson's "Pickpocket" only show the inability of Wim Wenders to narrate a good story..
At the age of 32, a prolific Wim Wenders forays into adapting Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley story to the celluloid screen in his seventh feature, THE AMERICAN FRIEND receives a Cannes main competition entry and stars Dennis Hopper as the self-exile middle-aged Tom Ripley in a cowboy hat living inside a big mansion on his ownsome in Hamburg, partakes in art forgery racket.
Nicholas Ray plays a presumedly dead painter Derwatt, sometimes wears an eye-patch, cynically tossing off new works for Ripley to sell in the auction house.It is where, Ripley meets Jonathan Zimmermann (Bruno Ganz in his big screen breakout role), a painter framer and art restorer, who is diagnosed with a rare blood disease, may or may not be pushing up daisies any day sooner, Jonathan unceremoniously brushes aside Ripley with a curt "I've heard of you" (a , the slight triggers the latter's retaliation (typically Ripley!), by disseminating rumors about the former's blood condition to be fatal, and recommends Jonathan when a French gangster Raoul Minot (Blain) needs a candidate with a clean slate as a hitman.
Dennis Hopper has a less prominent screen-time but it is an eye-pleasing experience (on the condition that if we could overlook his unsavory wig during the scenes of the second mission) to watch him not in his trademark menacing mode, but registers something more self-revealing.
Lisa Kreuzer, is hindered by a stereotyped suspicious wife role, must put on a strong face against all odds, yet plumbing into a feminine mindset is not Wenders' forte.A cineaste's lollapalooza, with many an auteur taking on an acting gig (Nicolas Ray, Samuel Fuller, Daniel Schmid, Jean Eustache, not to mention actor/director hyphenates Hopper and Blain), THE AMERICAN FRIEND is a testament that Wenders' faculty is on the verge of its full maturity, not a conventionally cut-throat crime thriller but a nostalgic scenester recapitulating its zeitgeist with a splash of idiosyncrasy and quaintness..
The story takes Jonathan from Germany to Paris to complete the jobs, and his friend and handler, Tom, acts as his guardian angel during the more difficult moments.This movie is a mixed bag for me.
The acting is good, with Dennis Hopper as Tom being particularly interesting, and Bruno Ganz doing a quiet and reserved Jonathan well.
Ripley (Dennis Hopper) becomes inexoribly enmeshed in the life of an art restorer (the wonderful Bruno Ganz)who is suffering from an incurable disease and wants to leave some money to his wife and kids.
Wim Wenders' adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's RIPLEY'S GAME does for Hitchcock what Godard's sixties cut-ups did for American gangster movies, with one fateful exception: Godard's movies were playful and ebullient.
Loosely based on the novel Ripley's Game and made by German Director Wim Wenders under the title Der amerikanische Freund the film stars Bruno Ganz (Downfall, Unknown) as Jonathan, a picture framer with a terminal blood disease.
Jonathan meets a wealthy American Tom Ripley (Dennis Hopper) who deals in art forgery.
Jonathan and Tom's buddy relationship was often strange but always satisfying.One of the things I liked about the film was its setting, Hamburg.
Der Amerikansche Freund by Wim Wenders gives us the most uncharacteristic and also the most fascinating take on the character Tom Ripley and the work Ripley's Game.
Dennis Hopper gives Ripley a new dimension as a truly eccentric and somewhat neurotic character and is far more powerful and intense than Malkovich's performance.
Dennis Hopper's Tom Ripley is opaque and inscrutable; but Ganz as the morally dubious picture framer and Robby Müller's cinematography make this a fine film.
And I'm not sure what writer-director Wim Wenders and Hopper were going for in this strange incarnation of Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley.
Dennis Hopper is quite a lot different than Tom Ripley in the books and really great as the character they decided to make in this.
The plot is straight out of Hitchcock, an ordinary family man(Bruno Ganz)meets a mysterious, menacing enigma (Dennis Hopper) who leads him out of his safe world on a series of dangerous missions in other big cities(Paris/ Munich).
The real problem arises in that Bruno Ganz treats the role seriously and puts some convincing angst into the ghastly situation he is put in, but Dennis Hopper clearly does not take the film seriously.
I don't think Wim Wenders was a bad filmmaker (Paris, Texas is one of my favorite films).
I loved "Ripley's Game," the American version of this starring John Malkovich, but I have to say "An American Friend" left me cold.I found the locations very interesting and the film itself endless and boring.I know Patricia Highsmith is a wonderful writer, but I have to say her Ripley series to me was always a little strange.
Here, Tom Ripley (Dennis Hopper) has been selling forged art, but another associate wants him to knock someone off.Tom of course doesn't want to get his hands dirty so he goes to a local picture framer (Ganz) who has a fatal disease, he's heard.
The framer eventually does agree, but he and Ripley end up forming an unlikely alliance.The film has many different locations, and uses French, German, and English throughout, which does make it interesting.
This adaptation of one of Patricia Highsmith's Tom Ripley novels casts Dennis Hopper as the main character.
Marla tells The Narrator of "Fight Club" how when people believe you have a terminal disease they really listen to you in a conversation instead of waiting for their turn to speak.So maybe this film wasn't made for the run-of-the-mill American viewer jaded by every movie scenes being populated by million dollar special effects or so-funny-its-beautifully-ironic snappy patter.
I truly understand his love for her work as he takes a truly American Genre - The Gangster Film - and stands it on its head.So give it try and view with an open mind and maybe you will become Wenders next American friend..
Just see the movie for yourself.Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz are fantastic as the perverse Ripley and his randomly picked/stalked friend.
Dennis Hopper gives real life to Tom Ripley in Wim Wenders truly atmospheric film.
This amorality, personified in Tom Ripley is wonderfully fleshed out by Wim Wenders' direction of Dennis Hopper in "The American Friend".
The viewer may be put off at the way the film plods along at times, but this is all part of the palette from which Wenders paints a world of futility for Zimmerman (and shared by residents of the post WWII/pre end of Cold War West Germany) as he begins to believe his illness is closing in around him worse than his life.
But that's the beauty of the movie, a beauty unique to the '70s, when American actors collaborated with European filmmakers, when different influences merged to create something unique.Based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith, the movie follows Tom Ripley, bon vivant, art dealer and occasional murderer.
Quite fascinating are the scenes with his family, which become increasingly darker, going from idyllic to nightmarish as his secret life distances him from his wife.Dennis Hopper gives a great performance too as Jonathan's amoral friend who plays with his life like a child with putty, manipulating it for no good reason other than personal gratification.
"I like to make money and I travel a lot." Tom Ripley also enjoys now and then corrupting a good man.
Der Amerikanische Freund (The American Friend), a German film by Wim Wenders based on Patricia Highsmith's Ripley's Game, gives us a couple of ironic pleasures of our own.
This version by Wenders came out in 1977 and featured Dennis Hopper as Ripley.
While Ripley's Game is definitely John Malkovich's movie, The American Friend comes very close to being Bruno Ganz's.
It looks good and Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz give great performances, but the film wastes a good premise with a tepid ending and a slapped-together story that lacks tension.
Much like Paris, Texas (the only other Wenders film I've seen), this is a very nicely shot film and I enjoyed most of it purely on aesthetics alone.However, I did not think the storyline was up to much and the fact that it hinges on a rather ridiculous scenario (that an average guy with a terminal illness would agree to kill two strangers in return for money to pay for his family after his death) made it all the harder to watch.
"The American Friend" is Wim Wenders' great existential thriller about a dying man hired to commit a murder so that his family can be looked after when he's dead.
The central character of the dying killer is Jonathan Zimmermann, (beautifully played by the late Bruno Ganz), and the film is less of a thriller, though the murders, (there is more than one), are brilliantly handled by Wenders if not by the killers, (there's more than one), than it is about how doing things contrary to our nature can be a form of catharsis.It's also another love letter to the cinema from its movie-loving director who casts Dennis Hopper as Ripley and the directors Nicholas Ray and Samuel Fuller in smaller parts and using locations in Paris, New York but mostly Hamburg to brilliant effect but unlike other directors who might find themselves classed as 'fanboys' Wenders never draws attention to his homages; they are just there, intrinsically worked into the film's fabric.
But it is not the only reason why 'The American Friend' deserves to be seen.In Wim Wenders' filmography this film occupies a special place.
The action is taken from Patricia Highsmith's novel and features as a hero Tom Ripley who enjoyed different and interesting versions by actors like Alain Delon, Matt Damon and John Malkovich.
Dennis Hopper may be listed first because of his big name, but this film is Ganz' character's story and Hopper is only a major supporting player, just like Lisa Kreuzer, who plays the female protagonist in this 2-hour film.I personally felt the movie never achieved real greatness or extraordinarily memorable moments and scenes, but it was still an atmospheric watch from start to finish.
From director Wim Wenders (Paris, Texas), based on the novel Ripley's Game, which I know was turned into a film with John Malkovich, this film featured in the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die book, so I naturally wanted to see it.
Basically Swiss picture framer Jonathan Zimmermann (Downfall's Bruno Ganz) from Hamburg, Germany is slowly dying of the blood disease leukaemia, and American art forger Tom Ripley (Dennis Hopper), and they are introduced to each other at an auction.
He manages to shoot the man in question at an underground train station without notice, and Ripley visits him before and after this happens to have a picture framed, Jonathan has no idea he is involved in the scheme, but the two become good friends.
Jonathan Zimmermann, a picture framer in Hamburg has a terminal blood disease.Tom Ripley is an American art dealer dealing in forgeries.He wants to use Jonathan's condition to his advantage.He is introduced to a gangster who proposes to the dying man he should become a mob assassin.That way he could leave a lot of money to his wife and son after he is gone.After a little while he agrees to do it.Der amerikanische Freund (The American Friend) from 1977 is a film directed by Wim Wenders.It's loosely adapted from the novel Ripley's Game (1974) by Patricia Highsmith, which I haven't read.This movie is very good.Dennis Hopper does an amazing job as Tom Ripley with that cowboy hat.I am very worried of Mr. Hopper's condition.He is losing his battle with prostate cancer and he is saying goodbye to his friends.All we can do now is wait for a miracle.We can't overlook the performance of Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Zimmermann.He plays the part of a dying man so well.Lisa Kreuzer does great work as his wife Marianne.Gerard Blain is great as the gangster Raoul Minot.Director legend Nicholas Ray is terrific as Derwatt.Screenwriter/director Samuel Fuller is brilliant as The American Mobster.The movie has some very fine moments.When Jonathan goes to the subway, following the man he should kill...It's all very intense.Or when Jonathan is supposed to do his second killing in a train and Ripley appears and does the deed in a toilet.Between all that violence the movie seems very beautiful..
Wim Wenders' "The American Friend" stars Dennis Hopper as Tom Ripley, an American living in Hamburg, West Germany.
Meanwhile, the distinctions between places like Hamburg, Paris and New York are blurred, all featureless and grey, while Jonathan goes through a character arc typical of such classic German films of the era (see Fassbinder), belittled, seduced and then dying at the feet of cowboy Tom Ripley.