The American Friend
Madman Entertainment | Release Date: September 24, 1977 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
79
METASCORE
Generally favorable reviews based on 11 Critic Reviews
Positive:
10
Mixed:
1
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
This is a Wenders masterwork--a chilling tale of painting, crime and forgery. [19 Jan 2007, p.C5]
90
Time OutStaff (Not Credited)
Superb adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel Ripley's Game, with Hopper as her amiably cynical hero. Read full review
80
EmpireKim Newman
Bruno Ganz is excellent as the victim deceived into committing murder. Read full review
80
The New York TimesJ. Hoberman
Like Taxi Driver, The American Friend was a new sort of movie-movie — sleekly brooding, voluptuously alienated and saturated with cinephilia. Read full review
80
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)
Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz are superb in Wim Wenders's The American Friend, a gripping Hitchockian thriller based on a novel by Patricia Highsmith. Read full review
80
Chicago ReaderDave Kehr
The film has a fine grasp of tenuous emotional connections in the midst of a crumbling moral universe. Wenders's films (Kings of the Road, Alice in the Cities) are about life on the edge; this is one of his edgiest. Read full review
75
The A.V. ClubKeith Phipps
Adapting Ripley's Game, the third of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley novels, 1977's The American Friend knits Wenders' ongoing concerns into a thriller in the Hitchcock mold. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineJordan Cronk
From its engagement with genre tropes (particularly film noir), to its tangibly grimy urban backdrops, to its archetypal hero/villain dramatic dichotomy, there’s no mistaking the film’s American influence. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
There's something cheerfully perverse about filming a thriller and then tossing out the parts that would help it make sense, but Wim Wenders has a certain success with the method in The American Friend. Read full review
75
Washington PostGary Arnold
An absorbing but rarefied, introspective variation on traditional thriller motifs, it's probably not the synthesis between the personal and traditional that Wenders needs but it's a fascinating compulsively watchable experiment. Read full review
60
The New YorkerPauline Kael
Wenders' unsettling compositions are neurotically beautiful visions of a disordered world, but the film doesn't have the nasty, pleasurable cleverness of a good thriller; dramatically, it's stagnant -- inverted Wagnerism.
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