***Possible Spoilers, Read at Your Own Risk***

Tom Ripley is a character that has been depicted a number of times in the last 60 years in both book and film. I, however, don’t know a whole lot about him. After seeing Dennis Hopper’s portrayal of Ripley in Wim Wenders’ The American Friend I don’t know how any of the other interpretations will be able to hold up.

We don’t know a whole lot about Ripley in this movie. We know he’s wealthy. We know he’s American. And we know he’s a shady dude to say the least. We meet him as he’s in the middle of an art scam. Someone he knows creates paintings and passes them off as the work of a famous, deceased artist. Ripley takes the paintings and auctions them off. With the help of an accomplice, Ripley is able to jack up the prices.

At the end of the most recent auction Ripley meets Jonathan (Bruno Ganz). The encounter doesn’t go well. In fact Jonathan is incredibly rude towards Ripley and refuses to shake his hand. The auctioneer advises Ripley not to mind Jonathan and explains that he’s going through a rough patch as he’s dealing with a terminal blood disease.

Jonathan doesn’t care to shake hands with Ripley because he hates art brokers. Jonathan is a framer, framing a lot of the paintings for the auctions and he hates people that run up the prices and sell art for a profit. He wants art to be enjoyed.

In what I would guess is an attempt to get back at Jonathan for the lack of respect, Ripley recommends him as a possible hitman to Raoul Minot (Gérard Blain), a French criminal. Minot is sold on the idea and approaches Jonathan. The selling point is that Jonathan doesn’t have long to live and he has a wife and a young child, so perhaps he’d be willing to earn some money to take care of his family after he dies. The issue is that Jonathan’s doctor claims the disease isn’t immediately life threatening.

Now Jonathan has a lot of problems on his hand. A complete stranger has approached him offering him a lot of money to kill someone, despite him not being a hitman. Plus he now has conflicting reports from doctors. His regular doctor thinks he’s fine, but this French doctor provided by Minot claims Jonathan is basically on his death bed. Furthering the complication is that Jonathan is strangely being befriended by Ripley.

I don’t know if the Coen Brothers were influenced in any way by The American Friend but I have to imagine they were. You can pick virtually any Coen Brothers film and you’ll find a lot of elements and themes in common with this classic from Wenders. To simplify things, this is a story about an everyday man who gets a caught up in a situation that is way over his head.  Jonathan has a chance to make a lot of money and it doesn’t look like anything will go wrong, yet everything goes wrong.

You could take Llewelyn Moss from No Country for Old Men and swap him out with Jonathan and I think both movies would essentially be the same; the characters have that much in common. Both men take a risk in an attempt to take care of their families and in both situations they end up making things much, much worse.

What makes The American Friend the riveting success that it is is the performance of Hopper. The movie creates a lot of tension and suspense. At any moment you think something terrible is going to happen, you just don’t know what or when. A lot of that is due to Hopper’s take on Ripley. Ripley’s motives are never entirely clear. You know he’s not exactly on the level, so the assumption is he only has the worst of intentions in mind, but it’s certainly not clear. You think he wants to get back at Jonathan, but then he befriends him. And the friendship seems genuine, at least at times. There’s a fantastic scene on a train in which Ripley basically saves Jonathan’s life. If Ripley is willing to save Jonathan’s life he can’t be all bad, right? But maybe he can? You never know. And that’s the beauty of Hopper’s Ripley.

The movie is also quite open ended. My initial thought was the artist painting pictures for Ripley was a fake, but there’s a line early in the movie where Ripley tells the man to stay hidden and he says something about how a dead man shouldn’t be seen or something along those lines. So maybe this man isn’t pretending to be a famous artist, but perhaps he’s faking his death? Or maybe I just interpreted something wrong. Then there’s the seriousness of Jonathan’s blood disease which is left up in the air. You’d think that his doctor is the one telling the truth, but with the way the film ends you never know. And of course, we never learn what Ripley’s true endgame is.

The American Friend is now out on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection and in what should be a surprise to no one it looks gorgeous. The film has some breathtaking locations, taking place in Germany, France and New York, and as a result there’s some gorgeous cinematography. The Blu-ray does a wonderful job bringing this work to life. The release also comes with some really nice special features. Two brand-new interviews are included, one with Wenders and another with Ganz. Both are fantastic, but the Wenders one is really special. He talks about how Hopper completely changed the character for the better. There’s also an older commentary with Hopper and Wenders which I haven’t had the chance to listen to yet. Rounding things out are some deleted scenes with optional commentary from Wenders.

The American Friend is a terrific, gripping neo-noir. Thanks to the Criterion Collection this piece of cinematic treasure now has a worthy release. Any cinephile is going to want this one in their collection.

The American Friend is now available on Blu-ray from the Criterion Collection.