The American friend
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | The American friend |
| Country of production |
Germany France |
| original language |
German English French |
| Publishing year | 1977 |
| length | 127 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Wim Wenders |
| script | Wim Wenders |
| production |
Renée Gundelach Margaret Ménégoz Joachim von Mengershausen Wim Wenders |
| music | Jürgen Knieper |
| camera | Robby Muller |
| cut | Peter Przygodda |
| occupation | |
| |
The American Friend is a German - French crime film by Wim Wenders from 1977 based on the novel Ripley's Game (1974) by Patricia Highsmith .
In Hamburg living Americans Tom Ripley is asked by a friend to help him in the fight against rival gangs. When looking for a contract killer who should be a stranger in the criminal milieu, Ripley's choice falls on a terminally ill frame maker. This is said to commit two murders in Paris and on the Trans-Europ-Express for a large sum .
action
The American Tom Ripley, who has settled in Hamburg, sells previously unknown pictures by the painter Derwatt, who are believed to be dead , through the Gantner auction house . In fact, Derwatt lives and paints incognito in New York . At the auctions, the prices are artificially driven up. The frame maker Jonathan Zimmermann, whose wife Marianne works at Gantner, noticed changes in the painting style of the Derwatt pictures allegedly discovered in the estate. When they are introduced later, Zimmermann condescends to remark that he has already heard from Ripley. Ripley learns from Gantner that Zimmermann is terminally ill.
Ripley receives a visit from his French friend Minot, who demands from Ripley to get him an outsider for a contract killing. Ripley is reluctant at first, but introduces Minot to Zimmermann after he confused him with targeted rumors that his illness was getting worse. Minot lures Zimmermann to Paris on the pretext of giving him an independent examination in a renowned hospital. With falsified laboratory results and the argument that he would be able to leave his young family with a livelihood after his death - we are talking about 250,000 DM - Minot succeeds in persuading the allegedly terminally ill to carry out a contract murder of an American gangster. Zimmermann shoots the man as instructed in a Paris Métro station. He can escape unmolested and return to Hamburg. Marianne reacts suspiciously to his secrecy.
As part of a further medical examination in Munich, Minot succeeds in persuading Zimmermann to commit another murder. The murder of a member of a gang competing with the group of the first victim is said to be carried out on the Trans-Europ-Express . This time the act threatens to fail when Ripley unexpectedly appears on the train and helps Zimmermann to finish the job. When Marianne discovers 97,000 DM in the family's savings account, she suspects that her husband is involved in criminal activities. Zimmermann's marriage is in crisis.
Minot seeks out Zimmermann in Hamburg and informs him that one of the gangsters exposed him as the mastermind behind the murders and that he carried out an bomb attack. Zimmermann then calls Ripley, who takes him to his villa, where they prepare for the gangster attack that occurs that night. They succeed in overpowering and killing all attackers; they free Minot, who was mistreated by the gangsters. When they are about to leave to dispose of the bodies, Marianne joins them. Zimmermann becomes completely indifferent, but Ripley manages to persuade Marianne to help clean up the bodies by driving a second car.
Ripley drives the car with the corpses of the gangsters to the North Sea beach and sets it on fire. When it explodes, Zimmermann wakes up from his apathy and flees with his wife, leaving Ripley on the beach. He seems liberated and is driving cocky lines on the empty coastal road, but shortly afterwards his eyes go black and he dies at the wheel of his car. The last pictures show the protagonists isolated from one another: Marianne leaves Zimmermann's body in his car, Ripley sits on the beach where he was left, and Derwatt walks alone along the West Side Highway in New York.
background
Production preparation
"After the last film Im Lauf der Zeit , which was made almost without a script, but above all without a 'story', I felt like working within the fixed framework of a story that someone else had written." (Wenders)
Wenders had been fascinated by Patricia Highsmith's novels for a number of years: “This is where stories of fears and petty cowardice and the tiny mistakes that everyone knows are created so well that you hardly notice them in yourself. [...] From a small and harmless lie, from a pleasant self-deception, a nasty story gradually emerges, a pull that you cannot escape because you understand it so well. "
Wenders had tried in vain to secure the film rights to Patricia Highsmith's novels The Scream of the Owl , The Trembling of the Forger and Venice Can Be Very Cold , for which other production companies had already acquired an option. Highsmith then offered him the unfinished manuscript for Ripley's Game during a visit .
For the role of Tom Ripley, Wenders first tried to win John Cassavetes , but he refused. Cassavetes again introduced him to Dennis Hopper , who accepted the role. The American friend was also Wenders' first collaboration with Bruno Ganz . Lisa Kreuzer , Wenders' partner at the time, had already worked in his films Alice in the Cities , Wrong Movement and In the Course of Time .
Wenders, an avid supporter of Nicholas Ray's films , and he met while filming. When Ray accepted the offer to play the painter Derwatt, Wenders rewrote the script especially for him.
The American friend was Wenders' first international co-production. In addition to Bavaria Film , Road Movies Filmproduktion , WDR and Wenders own production company, the French Les Films du Losange (founded in 1962 by Eric Rohmer and Barbet Schroeder ) also took part in the project.
Film and novel
Patricia Highsmith's novel was initially published in Germany under the title Ripley's Game or Rule Without Exception , but was renamed Ripley's Game or The American Friend with the release of the film . The film is relatively close to the original; Wenders moved the setting for large parts of the novel, in or near the city of Fontainebleau south of Paris, to Hamburg. In the novel there are two final confrontations between Ripley and Jonathan Trevanny (in the film Zimmermann) and the gangsters who are chasing them, the film shortens them to one. In the book, Trevanny / Zimmermann is shot at the last meeting, in the film he apparently dies of the consequences of his illness. Wenders also made use of a motif from Highsmith's novel Ripley Under Ground , in which an unknown painter produces pictures in the style of the dead artist Derwatt, which fetch high prices. In the film, it is Derwatt himself who faked his death but is still secretly active.
The biggest deviation from the original concerned the character of Tom Ripley: In the book a kind of Wildescher bon vivant , in the film this is a homeless, torn and lonely character who even sings Bob Dylan's song I Pity the Poor Immigrant at one point . Wenders, Highsmith complained, had turned Ripley into a gangster, and Dennis Hopper did not correspond to her idea of the character. Wenders said: “Although I had great faith in the stories of Patricia Highsmith, it was not easy for me to move around in them: Everything strived out of the story, especially the characters, all of them in a different direction wanted than in the one drawn up by the Highsmith. "
Filming and premiere
The shooting took place from October 1976 to March 1977 in Hamburg, Munich, Paris, New York and on the North Sea . Hopper's involvement was at risk due to poor health after filming the film Apocalypse Now and excessive drug use.
The film ran in May 1977 in the competition at the Cannes International Film Festival and then opened in German cinemas on June 24, 1977.
analysis
Male friendship
As in his previous film Over Time , Wenders tells of a friendship between men. After he is snubbed by Jonathan at the beginning of the film, Ripley decides to take revenge and thus starts the whole story. The closer the two men get, the more they appreciate each other's qualities. The two slowly approach each other, they give each other small gifts and finally they support each other in the dispute with the mafia gangsters. "Wenders describes [...] relationships with men with a fascinating mixture of 'cool' understatement and subliminal homoeroticism." (Wolfgang Limmer)
Film and American culture
The American friend is full of references to the medium of film and its cinematographic forerunners. Wenders cast many of the gangster roles with directors like Nicholas Ray , Peter Lilienthal and Samuel Fuller "because they are the only real crooks I know and the only ones who have life and death as casually as the Mafia". He dedicated the film in the opening credits to Henri Langlois , the founder of the Cinémathèque Française . As mentioned by Minot, the actor Jean Gabin died in the American hospital in Paris where Zimmermann is being examined . Zimmermann's escape through the Métro station, the scene of the first murder, can be seen as footage transmitted by surveillance cameras . In his shop, Zimmermann shows Ripley a toy that creates the illusion of moving images, and his son plays with a zoetrope and a Maltese cross gear in various scenes . Wenders also shot several scenes that show Marianne working as a voice actress, but did not use them in the final version.
In addition to reminiscences of Nicholas Ray and Alfred Hitchcock , Hans C. Blumenberg also discovered parallels to Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver . In a setting in which Tom Ripley is at the wheel of a car and its on cassette listening recorded diary entries, he is similar to sitting in his taxi protagonist Travis Bickle in Scorsese's film. Both characters, Ripley and Bickle, keep precisely dated diaries in which they record their estrangement: "I know less and less about who I am", Ripley speaks at the beginning of The American Friend in his recording device; "I'm God's lonely man" is how Bickle comments on his situation.
With "American icons" such as the Ford Thunderbird , the jukebox , the pool table , the Coca-Cola machine and the Stetson , with which Tom Ripley fills the space around him, Wenders documented "the impact of American culture on European" ( Sensesofcinema.com).
Painting and color design
Another motif that ran through the film for Wenders was that of pictures or painting: pictures are painted, forged and framed. The working title of The American Friend was "Framed" (which can be translated as "framed" as well as "cheated"). This was later dropped. There are further references to painting in the dialogues - Ripley Derwatt calls this "Master Titian" (German "Meister Tizian ") - and in various reproductions of paintings that can be seen, e. B. Vermeer's The Girl with the Pearl Earring in the Paris doctor's office.
In addition to subdued colors such as in Zimmermann's studio and at home, Wenders relied on the effect of dominant basic colors in many scenes , such as the green in Ripley's billiard room, the blue in Derwatt's pictures or the color red. “This red, brightly dark, iridescent and completely and even artificial, a synthetic cinema color [...] is reminiscent of the red in Nicholas Ray's films: ' Johnny Guitar ', ' Rebel without a Cause ', ' Party Girl '. "( Hans C. Blumenberg ) Wenders stated in an interview that he and cameraman Robby Müller used the images of Edward Hopper as a basis for developing the color dramaturgy of the film .
music
Jürgen Knieper's "wonderfully rich Hitchcock music" (Hans C. Blumenberg) quotes from at least two film scores composed by Bernard Herrmann for Alfred Hitchcock: The string motif from Knieper's theme music is similar to the one below. a. in the opening credits audible motif in Psycho , the pieces Hamburg and Der Bluttest the compositions Carlotta's Portrait and The Forest in Herrmann's music to Vertigo - From the Realm of the Dead . The latter also represents a variant of the predominant theme of deception or forgery in The American Friend : A young woman slips into the role of a millionaire heiress and fakes her suicide in order to cover up a crime.
Aftermath
The American friend was Wenders' most commercially successful film to date and aroused Francis Ford Coppola's interest in a joint project with the director. Wenders shot Hammett for Coppola, which was released in theaters in 1982.
In 2002 the book was filmed again under the title Ripley's Game . Directed by Liliana Cavani , John Malkovich played Tom Ripley.
Reviews
“A film adaptation of a crime novel by Patricia Highsmith, which is based more on the behavior of the people than on the external attributes of a crime novel. Wenders' description of subjective experience of reality is one of the best achievements of German film in the 1970s: References to American action cinema are combined with a high degree of technical care and cinematic skill. "
“Something dead, soulless emanates from these figures, people who wear their characteristics like costumes. In Wenders' cinema world, passions have no place and feelings only insofar as they are called loneliness. In this world he can tell his own, very personal stories. Everyone else, however, it seems, will freeze to death in it. "
“The great fascination of this film has to do with its complexity. You can understand it as a pessimistic commentary on the post-revolutionary crisis of consciousness of the late 1970s, but also as a brilliant detective film, you can admire it as an urban nightmare of the destruction of cities, but you can also love it as a poetic ballad of friendship. Its wealth, which is not without dangers, allows new adventures and new discoveries every time you see it. "
Awards (selection)
The American friend received the Federal Film Prize in gold in 1978 for best director and best editing and the film tape in silver (DM 300,000 prize money).
In 1977 the film was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film by the National Board of Review . In 1978 the film received a nomination for the César for Best Foreign Film .
In 1979 Bruno Ganz received the Catalan “Sant Jordi Award” for his performance .
literature
- Patricia Highsmith : Ripley's Game or The American Friend . With an afterword by Paul Ingendaay . Diogenes, Zurich 2004, ISBN 3-257-23416-3 (English: Ripley's Game . Translated by Matthias Jendis ).
Web links
- The American Friend on the official website of Wim Wenders
- The American Friend in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The American friend at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ^ Certificate of Release for The American Friend . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 49174 / V).
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i Wim Wenders on the DVD of Der American Friend , released by Arthaus in 2005 .
- ↑ a b c Gerd Gemünden and Michael Töteberg (eds.): Wim Wenders: attitudes. For the edition of the work, Atlas Film / Verlag der Autor, Duisburg / Frankfurt 1993, and online on the website of the Association of Film Communication Thuringia e. V., accessed September 4, 2012.
- ↑ Press booklet for the documentary From one who left - Wim Wenders' early years , Arsenal Filmverleih , Tübingen / Berlin 2007.
- ↑ Andreas Kilb: Three biscuits for a hallelujah in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of January 26, 2008, accessed on May 10, 2012.
- ↑ Andrew Wilson: Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith, Bloomsbury, London 2003; German Beautiful shade. The life of Patricia Highsmith, Berlin Verlag, Berlin 2003.
- ↑ The American Friend on Filmportal.de, accessed on May 10, 2012.
- ^ Festival archive of the Cannes Film Festival 1977 ( Memento of the original from October 31, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on Festival-cannes.fr, accessed on May 5, 2012.
- ↑ The American Friend in the Internet Movie Database .
- ↑ a b Wolfgang Limmer in Der Spiegel from June 20, 1977, accessed on September 4, 2012.
- ↑ a b c d Review by Hans C. Blumenberg in Die Zeit No. 27 of July 1, 1977.
- ^ "The spaces [Ripley] inhabits are full of American icons: a yellow New York taxi, a Thunderbird car, his jeans trousers and jacket, his cowboy hat, his jukebox and Coca-Cola machine, the pool table and Marlboro cigarettes. These numerous extra-filmic echoes add an additional dimension to Wenders' portrayal of the impact of America on European culture. ”- Article on Sensesofcinema.com, accessed September 4, 2012.
- ↑ Title of Knieper's compositions for The American Friend on the compilation Wim Wenders' Film Music , Milan Records 1989/1991.
- ^ Title of Herrmann's compositions on Vertigo , Varèse Sarabande 1996.
- ↑ The American Friend in the Lexicon of International Films .
- ↑ Prizes and nominations awarded in 1977 ( Memento of the original from September 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. of the National Board of Review, accessed May 5, 2012.
