by Nick Schager
[This week's "Retro Active" pick is inspired by the con-man documentary thriller The Imposter.]
European and American sensibilities collide in both form and content in The American Friend, German New Wave auteur Wim Wenders' 1977 adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley's Game that blends Euro artiness and American pulp via the story of the unlikely relationship forged between Yankee hustler Tom Ripley (Dennis Hopper) and German picture framer Jonathan Zimmermann (Bruno Ganz). Like Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai and Le Cercle Rouge, Wenders' film encases film noir fatalism in tonal and aesthetic chilliness. It's a marriage that makes it not only Wenders' best film—given an intricate narrative to work with allows for fewer of the director's pretentious proclivities—but a simultaneously stark and suspenseful portrait of alienation, blindness, and the search for (and confrontation of) one's true self. At the bleak heart of that quest is Jonathan, who's dying of a rare blood disease and is first introduced with his...
[This week's "Retro Active" pick is inspired by the con-man documentary thriller The Imposter.]
European and American sensibilities collide in both form and content in The American Friend, German New Wave auteur Wim Wenders' 1977 adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley's Game that blends Euro artiness and American pulp via the story of the unlikely relationship forged between Yankee hustler Tom Ripley (Dennis Hopper) and German picture framer Jonathan Zimmermann (Bruno Ganz). Like Jean-Pierre Melville's Le Samourai and Le Cercle Rouge, Wenders' film encases film noir fatalism in tonal and aesthetic chilliness. It's a marriage that makes it not only Wenders' best film—given an intricate narrative to work with allows for fewer of the director's pretentious proclivities—but a simultaneously stark and suspenseful portrait of alienation, blindness, and the search for (and confrontation of) one's true self. At the bleak heart of that quest is Jonathan, who's dying of a rare blood disease and is first introduced with his...
- 7/15/2012
- GreenCine Daily
Strange, how objects travel between films, across times, spaces and fictions. Here: An Econolite train motion lamp, with "General" engine. Apparently a prerequisite for European auteurs making post-modern, American-style Hitchcock pastiches. A way to simultaneously signify an intimate, cozy family atmosphere, fold contemporary-seeming references to American cinema further back to pre-cinema optical illusions, and, most movingly, take on a kind of parental cinephilia, directors not just referencing movies but creating family spaces imbued fictionally and meta-fictionally with a love for cinema, passing it down to children.
From François Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black (1968), featuring Jeanne Moreau and Christophe Bruno; cinematography by Raoul Coutard.
From Wim Wender's The American Friend (1977), featuring Bruno Ganz and Andreas Dedecke; cinematography by Robby Müller.
From François Truffaut's The Bride Wore Black (1968), featuring Jeanne Moreau and Christophe Bruno; cinematography by Raoul Coutard.
From Wim Wender's The American Friend (1977), featuring Bruno Ganz and Andreas Dedecke; cinematography by Robby Müller.
- 11/15/2011
- MUBI
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