THE AMERICAN FRIEND (1977)

Wim Wenders best films are astonishing hybrids of American energy and European artiness. And this is Wender’s finest, though among his least-known. For the only time in his career, Wenders renounced self-consciousness to serve plot, character and suspense.

Tom Ripley was the misanthropic novelist Patricia Highsmith’s favorite character: she wrote five Ripley novels. Most audiences know only her first, The Talented Mr. Ripley, so most people think of Ripley as a cuddly murderer-by-accident. Not Highsmith. She wrote Ripley as the most dangerous person on Earth, a charming sociopath who always gets away with it. 

Dennis Hopper incarnates Ripley as a stylish, rootless hustler with a gnat's attention span, a vampire's arrogance, a narcissist's easily wounded vanity, and a wolverine' saggressive instincts. This is the performance of Hopper's career, uncharacteristically layered and subtle. 

Confronting Hopper is Bruno Ganz as a self-contained, Old World craftsman seeking a safe life. Hopper confronts his dread by laying waste to everything in his path; Ganz hides from his mortality by creating objects that endure. For all the good it does either one of them....

The 4K restoration is beautiful the new stereo mix of the original mono sountdrack means you can actually understand what most of the characters – including Gerard Blain – are saying.

Samuel Fuller, Jean Eustache and even Satya de la Manitou round out an astonishing supporting cast.