The American Friend (4k) at GFT
23 – 28 July, 2022
Director Wim Wenders adapted Patricia Highsmith’s novel Ripley’s Game for The American Friend which won the German Critics Prize in 1977, as well as gold in two categories of the German Film Prize, and is now considered a cult film.
Jonathan Zimmermann (Bruno Ganz) believes that he will soon die of leukaemia. The unscrupulous American Tom Ripley (Dennis Hopper), learns of this and exploits Zimmermann’s illness for his own purposes. He introduces Jonathan to the underworld figure Minot (Gérard Blain), who offers to hire the terminally ill man as a professional hit man. He is to be paid appropriately for his work and thus enabled to leave something behind for his wife (Lisa Kreuzer) and their child. What does he have to lose, since he is going to die anyway?
A friendship develops between the two very different men, and this ultimately leads Ripley to intervene when Zimmermann proves incapable of carrying out an additional murder. The cast of Wenders’ film includes not only Hopper and Blain; many of the supporting roles of gangsters are also played by fellow directors, such as Hollywood legends Sam Fuller and Nicholas Ray, as well as Peter Lilienthal, Daniel Schmid and Jean Eustache.
Screening in 4K
Glasgow Film Theatre, 12 Rose Street, G3 6RB
This section: Cinema
Filed under: Cinema
Related Pages
- Youth Screening: Grey Gardens at GFT
- If Only I Could Hibernate
- Fantastic Machine at GFT
- Bleeding Love at GFT
- Sometimes I Think About Dying at GFT
- Special Screenings to Mark Anniversary Year at Glasgow Film Theatre
- The Lives of Others – 35mm, Special 50 Anniversary Screening GFT
- Cinema Paradiso – Special 50th Anniversary Screening GFT
- Jean de Florette + Manon des Sources (Double-bill) – 50th Anniversary Screening GFT
- Late Night: Escape from New York
- Fellini’s Roma + Introduction
- Take 2: Kids Animations: Why’s the Sky Blue?
- Billy Connolly’s Big Banana Feet at GFT
- At the Volta with James Joyce, GFT
- B Movie.Lust and Sound in West Berlin
- One Night In Millstreet
- The Teacher’s Lounge
- Close Your Eyes
- Ratcatcher – 25th Anniversary
- Silver Haze plus recorded Q & A