Synopsis

A Hamburg picture framer with a serious illness is drawn into the criminal world when Tom Ripley proposes him for a contract killing. What begins as a desperate attempt to secure his family's future becomes a tense journey through European cities, forcing the reluctant craftsman into an uneasy alliance with the enigmatic American and the violence surrounding him.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film is loosely adapted from Patricia Highsmith's 1974 novel Ripley's Game, with elements also drawn from Ripley Under Ground.

• Filming took place between October 18, 1976, and March 11, 1977, in Hamburg, Munich, Paris, New York, and along the North Sea.

• Several gangster roles were filled by fellow filmmakers, including Nicholas Ray, Samuel Fuller, Jean Eustache, Peter Lilienthal, and Daniel Schmid. Their appearances give the crime story an unusually self-aware connection to cinema.

• Dennis Hopper arrived in Germany directly from the Philippine location of Apocalypse Now, still wearing military clothing and bearing the look of someone fresh from a jungle shoot.

• The production reportedly used a real gun in one train-station sequence because the filmmakers could not afford a convincing replica.

• The Mercedes ambulance used in the film appealed so strongly to Hopper that he bought it after production. The ambulance destroyed on screen was a less expensive replica.

• The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 26, 1977, and later received German Film Awards for direction and editing.

• A 4K restoration was completed in 2014.