The American Friend

Der amerikanische Freund (1977; The American Friend), based on Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley’s Game, explores the concept of dislocation, or separation. For this film, Wenders cast his longtime idol, film director Nicholas Ray, and the two later collaborated on the documentary Lightning over Water (1980), about the last days of…

…cameo performance to Wim Wenders’s The American Friend in 1977. The Big Red One (1980) was an autobiographical account of Fuller’s old unit—the 16th Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division, the insignia for which was a big red 1. The film was discursive but powerful. It was heavily cut on…