Der amerikanische Freund (The American Friend)

Wim Wenders - 1977
On the surface, I suppose Wenders' films look formally quite conservative. What I mean is that there's nothing particularly long or short about the takes, no shaky camera, nothing too grand. People filmed in rooms, panning and tracking about, quite a bit of shots and reverses. I suppose he has a tendency for some very long shots, landscapes, and that he also generally avoids too many singles, but nothing too much.
Yet he is formally very impressive, with an air of Hitchock in his manipulation of eyeline matches and expression in his little moves. His images are attractive in their slickness, with strong colours in often dark interiors.
What i enjoyed most about this film was the use of narrative, location, genre. It does have a clear narrative, but it is not always clear that this is so... at times one feels one is watching 'Detective', before it all comes together. Perhaps this is partly because their are individual sequences that suddenly we realise we are watching a thriller with Dana Andrews on a train, or a Wyler-ish bit of romance, more rarely (more the former). This is the love of Hollywood, or rather of movies, that we have here; the use of trains, references to masses, Keaton, appearances by Ray and Fuller.
The plot is technically a Highsmith novel, but there is really a hell of a lot going on here, that I'm not fully able to comment on, more the worse to me. The existentialist question of the coming death we face, heightened, the choice that confronts. Add to this the whoring to America, and at once the falsity of their art, but the friendship of the American. An excellent film.