Elective Affinities

Of course the link between Ripley and Columbo (crikey, it's like Alien vs Predator) is Wim Wenders. First of all you have (a terribly miscast) Ripley in The American Friend, a terrific film as long as one bears in mind it has no real correlation with Highsmith's Ripley whatsoever. One somehow doesn't see him as Frank Booth, psychotically ranting and raving...oddly though Wenders has note-perfect the more typical Highsmith protagonist played by Bruno Ganz, whose furtiveness, mediocrity and capacity for mundane brutality is captivating...interesting that Wenders couldn't handle Ripley though, as if his humanism couldn't contain such a character. This of course is what ruins all his post-Wings of Desire work- though half of that film is spectacular, and of course features Columbo tucking into currywurst at a Kreuzberg imbiss, confessing his former life as an angel...which begs the question as to why Wenders chose him to have this sem-deified role- surely because of his fundamentally inhuman capacity to always be right?