The American Friend

Wenders’s first “commercial” film merges his usual steadily presented musings on European identity, American culture, and cinema with some surprising new ingredients, from pulp-thriller source material—Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley’s Game—to a star turn from the manic, ever-destabilizing Dennis Hopper. A dying clockmaker (Bruno Ganz) meets a seedy American (Hopper, of course) who promises to take care of the man’s family after he dies, provided that Ganz “take care” of a mob hit. Neo-noir by way of European arthouse, The American Friend shows its inspirations through its wide-ranging cameos, from Nicholas Ray to Samuel Fuller, Jean Eustache to Daniel Schmid.