The American Friend (1977)

Happy Birthday America! (a little early)

Though I would love to post something about the Constitution and our freedoms, these things seem to be controversial these days - and I don't want an out of control message board argument.

So I am posting something from one of my favorite European directors whose films are often valentines to America. He can take a 9 year old girl and turn her into the tour guide for America - seeing our world through her eyes... or show us small town life in Texas, or give us a Hollywood full of conspiracies and crime, or the great America road trip... in Germany! But I first discovered him with this Hitchcockian film based on a Patricia Highsmith Ripley novel about a normal dad and husband who discovers he is dying of a rare disease and is offered a fortune to leave for his family... all he has to do is kill a guy. A total stranger. A mobster the world would be better off without. Could you kill someone to help your family?

Here is that murder - a longish clip, but intense.



- Bill