The American Friend (1977)
Directed by Wim Wenders
Tom Ripley, an American who deals in forged art, is slighted at an auction in Hamburg by picture framer Jonathan Zimmerman. When Ripley is asked by gangster Raoul Minot to kill a rival, he suggests Zimmerman, and the two, exploiting Zimmerman's terminal illness, coerce him into being a hitman.
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What critics compared The American Friend to
Then there was Wim Wenders better version, "The American Friend (77)," where Dennis Hopper got into the sinister con man's character and showed how his criminal guilt was related to Germany's postwar guilt.
His films—even his most plotted work, The American Friend (my favorite)—are in no hurry to get to the seemingly no particular place they're going.
Co-written and directed by Wenders ("The American Friend," "Paris, Texas") after being inspired by the poet Rainer Maria Rilke's verses about angels, "Wings of Desire" is the filmmaker's observance of the smaller joys of life and living, the things most of us pass over.
Deep Water is based on the 1957 novel by Patricia Highsmith, whose work has inspired an entire shelf of classic films, including Strangers on a Train , The Talented Mr. Ripley , The American Friend , Purple Noon , Carol , and others.
A noir lineage (Mann's T-Men, Fleischer's Trapped), Robby Müller from The American Friend.
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The Kinks have an important place in Wenders’ filmography; in his classic “The American Friend,” the doomed framer played by Bruno Ganz sings along softly with that group’s “Too Much on My Mind” in his atelier during one of his imperfect days.