With The American Friend, Wenders adds film noir to his filmography and expresses his love and appreciation for a bygone American genre. Despite departing from the road movie genre he had spent the last few years mastering, he lets that open-road adventure from his "Road" trilogy figure into the final act of this update of the film noir. Maintaining its style and storytelling elements, The American Friend ditches the genre's typical B&W cinematography in exchange for a saturated neon color palette that feels just as moody and oppressive - Robby Müller is at his most refined and vibrant at this point in his collaborative partnership with Wenders.

The film has a Hitchcockian atmosphere of tension that manages to stay constant throughout its runtime, most notably in a wonderfully executed train murder sequence around the midpoint. The character-driven storyline is masterfully carried out by the dynamic performances of Bruno Ganz - whose descent into evil forms the emotional backbone of the story - and Dennis Hopper - who was surprisingly less present in the film than I expected and whose character felt like a stoned, calculating, and quirky predecessor to Frank Booth. Amidst a plot that is admittedly rather predictable, this tension and these performances are the most valuable players.

Having been made just a year after Kings of the Road and less than a decade before Paris, Texas, The American Friend proves that Wenders could switch up movie genres without losing thematic consistency. Even when doing a neo-noir, he crafted intimate humanist stories guided by performances that were intriguing and at times authentic enough to be borderline non-performance, all while wringing visually striking setpieces out of the most mundane locations. The staples of his road films managed to transfer quite well to this type of film.

3 SIDE NOTES:
- The themes of consequences, retribution, and misfortune in this reminded me of the Coen Bros filmography. I wonder if they were influenced by this film.
- Having worked under his direction on Rebel Without a Cause, having Nicholas Ray as a costar (and quite the scene-stealing one) must have been really something for Dennis Hopper.
- Wenders' affection for the west is ever-present, from Hopper's cowboy hat to the folk songs quoted in the dialogue. These little inserts truly feel like foreshadowing to Paris, Texas.