Other Titles • Ali: Fear Eats the Soul • Angst essen Seele auf • Alle Türken heißen Ali (1974) • Fear Eats the Soul • Fear Eats out the Soul
Synopses for Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)
1.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder paid tribute to his mentor, Douglas Sirk, with this loose adaptation of All That Heaven Allows, the classic American soaper of a widow falling for younger man to the disapproval of family and friends. Fassbinder combines the Sirk melodrama with the story told in his own The American Soldier. An aging, lonely charwoman (sweet old Brigitte Mira) befriends a Moroccan guest worker (El Hedi ben Salem) at least 20 years her junior. Finding comfort and happiness in one another's company, they suddenly marry. Her kids are aghast, his friends appalled, and the neighborhood turns its back, so the two pull together for support. Their relationship ironically begins to unravel when the pressure of community prejudice eases and they must confront the gulf between them. Combining melodrama with social commentary, Fassbinder offers a sharp, incisive portrait of prejudice in modern Germany grounded in contemporary social conditions. Mira delivers a tender, vulnerable performance and Fassbinder molds Salem's stiffness into a distinctive character trait of a man ill at ease in German society. It's an assured and beautiful film, full of gliding camerawork and evocative images, and invested with intimacy and gentleness. Even Fassbinder's characteristically grim conclusion defies tragedy for a glimmer of hope, a welcome and affecting rarity in his career. --Sean Axmaker
2.
A deceivingly simple film about the uncomfortable romantic relationship between a 60 year-old German cleaning woman named Emmi and a 40 year-old Moroccan immigrant named Ali, ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL is one of director R.W. Fassbinder's most powerful pictures. Brought together by a jeering barmaid, Emmi and Ali are surprised to find that, after their initial meeting, they like one another. After a somewhat awkward courtship, the two unlikely lovers marry, angering Emmi's children and revealing the startling prejudices that pervade everyday German life. Winner of the International Critics' Prize at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival.
3.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder, already the director of almost twenty films by the age of 29, paid homage to his cinematic hero, Douglas Sirk, with this updated version of Sirk's All That Heaven Allows. Lonely widow Emmi Kurowsky (Brigitte Mira) meets Arab worker Ali (El Hedi ben Salem) in a bar during a rainstorm. To their own surprise––and to the shock of family, colleagues, and drinking buddies––they fall in love. In Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen seele auf), Fassbinder expertly uses the emotional power of the melodrama to underscore the racial tensions threatening German culture
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