The Bottom Line
Fassbinder coats his analysis of racism with a genuinely compelling love story.
Pros
- Touching and incisive melodrama
- Rainer Werner Fassbinder updates Douglas Sirk weepies for 1970s Germany
- One of the classics of the New German Cinema
Cons
- There are no cons.
Description
- Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974. 93 minutes.
- New digital transfer with restored image and sound.
- Thorough and thoughtful introduction by director Todd Haynes ("Far From Heaven")
- Lengthy interviews with actress Brigitte Mira and editor Thea Eymesz
- Short film "Angst Isst Seele auf" (2002)
- A BBC documentary about the New German Cinema
- Excerpt of "The American Soldier," where Emmi's story first appeared
- A 16-page booklet with essays on the film
Guide Review - Ali: Fear Eats the Soul DVD
Fleeing from the rain, aging widow Emmi (Brigitte Mira) ducks into a pub and orders a cola. When a Moroccan foreign worker asks her to dance, a troubled love story develops between the Arab and the German cleaning lady. Under the jealous eyes of their neighbors and the yapping tongues of Emmi's collegues, the couple tries to make their fragile cross-cultural, interracial, and serverly age-gapped relationship work. In typical wunderkind fashion, Fassbinder has it both ways: he coolly observes the social dynamics at work when Emmi's grocer refuses to sell to Ali and when her selfish children turn or her, but he also wrings trembling emotion from the fraught love story.
