My Polaroid Friends

At the time, Polaroid pictures corresponded to what you’d nowadays do on your smart phone. Polaroids were the analog predecessor of instant photography. They truly represented a photographic notebook, only that the cameras spat out printed “originals.” I recorded my location survey and pinned the little prints on the wall of the production office. The script person took Polaroids of every scene for continuity reasons. I photographed my actors during preparation and sometimes in between scenes. And even in the story, Polaroids were used, in our case by Dennis Hopper who played the dubious character of Tom Ripley and who became so much our “American Friend” during the film that we changed its title from "Framed" to what it has become ever since.

In that scene, Tom Ripley is alone in his big house in the middle of the night and tormented by remorse, because he has manipulated the innocent German craftsman Jonathan Zimmermann (played by Bruno Ganz) into committing a murder. The way he acted out his pain was by taking a series of self-portraits with the help of his SX-70 camera, finally lying down on his pool table and letting the pictures fall down on him like rain. The scene somehow caught an early insight into the narcissistic obsession we all later suffered from when we began to take selfies as if it was the most normal thing on earth. Well, it is now. Who would have thought then that we’d even get used to the fact that our cameras have lenses on both sides! That was unthinkable then, when Ripley turned the Polaroid camera on himself like a gun in order to commit suicide.

In another scene Ripley drives his fabulous Thunderbird through Hamburg and records his thoughts on a portable Walkman. Another reminder of the long and inevitable way into the digital realm…

Text/ Wim Wenders

With the collaboration of the Wim Wenders Foundation, Düsseldorf, and Wenders Images, Berlin.

Born 1945 in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.

Wim Wenders is considered one of the most important representatives of contemporary cinema. In addition to multi-award-winning feature films like Paris, Texas (1984) or Wings of Desire (1987), he has also created several Oscar-nominated documentaries such as Buena Vista Social Club, PINA and The Salt of the Earth. Besides being a director, producer, and author, Wenders also has also been working as a photographer since 1984. His work has been exhibited in museums and galleries around the world and includes several art-related 3D installations. The nonprofit Wim Wenders Foundation brings together his life’s work and promotes young filmmakers with the Wim Wenders Grant for innovative storytelling.