Did You Know?
Seven movie directors are in the cast of this film, all of them (by design) playing criminals.
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Director Wim Wenders originally wanted to adapt his favorite Patricia Highsmith novel, "The Cry of the Owl," but the film rights had already been sold. He then attempted to obtain the rights to his next favorite Highsmith novel, "The Tremor of Forgery," but the rights to this novel had also already been sold. Upon learning that Wenders wanted to adapt one of her novels, Highsmith offered him an unpublished manuscript of "Ripley's Game."
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Wim Wenders originally considered John Cassavetes for the role of Ripley. Cassavetes turned down the role, but suggested Dennis Hopper.
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Patricia Highsmith initially disliked Wim Wenders' film because Ripley's character didn't match her intentions. Only after she saw the film at a regular screening did she admit that Wenders had captured the essence of Ripley.
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This German film, a 1977 adaptation of 'Ripley's Game', follows Purple Noon, a 1960 French adaptation of 'The Talented Mr. Ripley' with Alain Delon. The next Ripley movie came out in 1999, The Talented Mr. Ripley with Matt Damon, and the next Ripley film after that came Ripley's Game. In much the same way that Dennis Hopper played Ripley at seventeen years older than Delon (both men born in 1935), John Malkovich (born 1953) took the role from Matt Damon (born 1970). None of the films, however, have been made as sequels to one another and do not follow the timeline of the books.
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Though primarily based on the Patricia Highsmith novel "Ripley's Game," the film also uses elements, uncredited, of "Ripley Under Ground," which was later adapted to film in 2005 as Ripley Under Ground. Specifically, Ripley's involvement in an art forgery scheme, and the Derwatt character. In the film, Derwatt has seemingly faked his own death and "forges" his own paintings, which Ripley then sells. In "Ripley Under Ground," Derwatt dies before the story begins, and Ripley and his accomplices conspire to trick the public into thinking he's still alive while a Derwatt admirer forges new paintings in his name.
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Wim Wenders was not fond of the novel's title, "Ripley's Game." The film was shot under the working title "Framed." Another title considered was "Rule Without Exception." Wenders finally settled on "The American Friend" due to the relationship in the film between Ripley and Jonathan.
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Wim Wenders originally wanted to shoot the film in a static way with no camera movement. He changed his mind and re-shot the first two days of filming, this time including more camera movement.
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The film was constantly being rewritten, on a daily basis. Dennis Hopper improvised much of his dialogue. He improvised Ripley's dialogue when he is speaking into the tape recorder, saying that "there is nothing to fear but fear itself," because this scene was being shot on December 7th, the anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
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Bruno Ganz worked in a frame shop for weeks to prepare for his role as a frame shop worker.
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The scene in which Ripley visits Jonathan in his shop was the first day of shooting for Dennis Hopper.
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Wim Wenders has said that unlike most films, in which most of the sound is re-recorded in a studio, 99.5% of the sound in the film was recorded on location.
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After casting Dennis Hopper in the film, Wim Wenders decided to cast known directors as the criminal characters in the film. These included Nicholas Ray, Sam Fuller, and Gérard Blain.
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Jonathan's frame shop was actually a hatmaker's shop. The owner of the shop has a cameo in the film.
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Bruno Ganz carried a real gun during the scene in which he assassinates a man in the train station, because, humorously enough, the filmmakers could not afford a fake gun.
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Dennis Hopper, director and star of Easy Rider, quotes from "The Ballad of Easy Rider" while looking at the river from his mansion.
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According to the DVD commentary, Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz did not initially get along and got into a fistfight on the set. After a night of drinking, the two returned to the set with their differences settled.
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Ripley quotes from the Bob Dylan song "I Pity the Poor Immigrant" at the end of the film. ("Pity the poor immigrant... whose...") The lyrics of the song have clear parallels to the film's characters ("I pity the poor immigrant whose strength is spent in vain," "I pity the poor immigrant who wishes he would've stayed home, who uses all his power to do evil, but in the end is always left so alone, that man whom with his fingers cheats, and who lies with every breath").
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When Jonathan Zimmerman's son is in the workshop he is playing with a big wooden model of the maltese cross, the essential part of a film projector that makes the frame-by-frame movement of the film possible.
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