Abstract
This chapter examines Wim Wenders’ The American Friend (1977) in the context of European late modernity in the 1970s and the history of film noir. If noir typically offers a negative allegory in which neither the position of the criminal nor that of the law is a positive option, the Ripley series marks a striking mutation in this allegory of failure, with the protagonist occupying a position both within and against the system. Highsmith’s undoing of noir allegory is in turn reworked by Wenders in order to stage an allegory about the false promises of American-style modernization, as Ripley drives the plot forward in a manner suggestive of the power the U.S. has had in shaping European modernity from the Marshall Plan forward.
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Breu, C. (2018). With Friends Like These: Wim Wenders’ The American Friend as Noir Allegory. In: Schwanebeck, W., McFarland, D. (eds) Patricia Highsmith on Screen. Palgrave Studies in Adaptation and Visual Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-96050-0_11
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