eShop USA > DVD > Ali - Fear Eats the Soul - Criterion Collection
Ali - Fear Eats the Soul - Criterion Collection
List Price: $39.95Our Price: $35.99 You Save: $3.96 (10%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Audience Rating: Unrated
Binding: DVD
EAN: 9781559409391
Format: Color, DVD-Video, Subtitled, NTSC
ISBN: 1559409398
Label: Criterion
Languages: English (Subtitled), German (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono
Manufacturer: Criterion
MPN: 1591
Number Of Items: 1
Publisher: Criterion
Region Code: 1
Release Date: June 24, 2003
Running Time: 93 minutes
Studio: Criterion
Theatrical Release Date: 1974
Related Items: Featured Listmania!
Editorial Review:
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
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.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - Fear Eats the Soul is one of Fassbinder's best films.
Rainer Werner Fassbinder made three of his best films in the early 1970s, The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971) (Händler der vier Jahreszeiten), The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), (Die Bitteren Tränen der Petra von Kant), and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) (Angst essen Seele auf), for which he won the International Critics Prize at Cannes in 1974. Fassbinder made Fear Eats the Soul on a shoestring budget in just 15 days in September, 1973. It tells the story of two people drawn together ... Read More
Rating: - The Best Film of the New German Cinema?
The New German Cinema that flowered in the 1970's had many directorial wunderkind -- Herzog, Wenders, Volker Schloendorff. But with this film, Rainer Werner Fassbinder nosed ahead of the pack with the international arthouse audience. In many ways it's a very accessible film, largely because Brigitte Mira is so wonderful in her heart-breaking portrayal of sad, lonely Emmi who knows that to love and be loved is more important than anything else. But for some viewers, Fassbinder's development as a filmmaker ... Read More
Rating: - Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
A scathing satire on romance, racism, and German-Arab relations, Fassbinder's "Ali" is a brilliant reminder that love can soothe only when it is sanctioned by a social community. Inspired by Douglas Sirk's 1955 "All That Heaven Allows," the film deals with human vulnerability and the alienating effects of isolation due to age, class, and one's skin color, glimpsing a tender but troubled relationship between two outcasts. Mira, one of Fassbinder's favorite actresses, is simply heartbreaking as Emmi, a 60-ish ... Read More
Rating:  - "The story of impossible love"
This powerful and gentle film tells the story of love and marriage of Emmi, a 60+ widowed German cleaning lady and Ali, a Moroccan immigrant mechanic who is more than 20 (I think close to 30) years her younger. Their affair and the decision to marry shocked everyone who knew Emmi: her grown children, her neighbors, coworkers (mostly, middle-aged widows as herself) and even the owner of a neighborhood grocery shop where she has been a loyal customer for years. The way clever and observant Fassbinder looks at ... Read More
Rating:  - Two generations from Hitler
The movie is misnamed. The title makes you think that it is a horror flick, but there is little fear and no soul-eating going on.
A dark skinned Arab man from Morocco lives in Germany in the 1970s. The German people, just one or two generations from that happy Nazi Generation we were all so fond of, detest all foreigners and call most of them Ali. The greatest shame would be for a German woman to marry one, God Forbid. That would make her a whore.
Enter Emmi, a middle aged German ... Read More
Related Categories:
| |
 |
