"The American Friend" (1977) starred Dennis Hopper as a
Ripley in a cowboy
hat, and is filmed lovingly in the noir style, with cameo
appearances by
Samuel Fuller and Nicholas Ray (as gangsters, I think). For
those who know
the Dennis Hopper mode of acting, the most amazing thing is
that Wenders
(or someone) was able to tone him down enough to bring off
the man in
control of every situation. Bruno Ganz plays the doomed
picture-framer
drawn into the plot. It's out in video.
> Come to think of it, "Paris, Texas: (1984) [also by
Wenders] had a kind of
Jim Thompson feel to it in some places, if I remember it
right.
May be because it was written by Sam Shepard, the Texas
actor-playwright
who specializes in off-center characters. Harry Dean
Staunton, protagonist
of "Paris, Texas," appears with Shepard in his best
screenplay (IMO) "Fool
for Love," a nice going-crazy-in-Western-spaces sort of film.
Shepard is
not hard-boiled, not as dark as Thompson, but he's very good
with people on
the edge.
Bill Hagen
<billha@ionet.net>
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