‘Ali: Fear Eats the Soul‘ (German title is ‘Angst essen Seele auf‘) was in 1974 Rainer Werner Fassbinder‘s first internationally acclaimed film, earning public and critical attention worldwide. He had already written and directed about 20 films, and roughly as many would follow in the only eight years of the rest of his life, a life and a film career resembling a flame that burned so intensely until it consumed its torch. Made in just two weeks, ‘Ali: Fear Eats the Soul‘ is one of his masterpieces, a film of a unique sincerity and tenderness, a story about two lonelinesses that meet in an impossible love story, a severe critique of a society that had formally buried the ghosts of the past but was in fact unable to get rid of social prejudice, racism and xenophobia.
Some of the film’s key scenes take place in a bar in Munich. In the opening scene of the film, Emmi (Brigitte Mira), a lonely woman (we will soon find out that she is a widow) in her early 60s enters the place to take refuge from the rain. Inside we can see the bartender (Barbara Valentin) and a few other characters, all lonely, all silent, people whose eyes do not meet. The scene, the light, the attitudes resemble a painting by Edward Hopper. At the bartender’s urging, one of the men invites Emmi to the dance. It is the beginning of a relationship that goes against all conventions. The man, Ali (El Hedi ben Salem), at least 20 years younger, is a Moroccan immigrant, speaking broken German, working hard during the day and living at nights together with five other immigrants in a one room apartment. Emmi is a woman with a reasonable financial situation but very lonely. She works as a cleaning lady in a company, she had been a Nazi party member in her youth (‘like everyone else’) although her deceased husband had also been an immigrant, coming from Poland. Everything separates them except the loneliness that pushes them towards each other in a relationship that the whole social and family entourage (Emmi has two sons and a daughter, all adults, at their homes) opposes. When it does not take direct and violent forms (such as the reaction of one of the sons) the rejection takes the form of social ostracism and boycotts from neighbours, co-workers, the owner of the apartment. Will the two manage to overcome the prejudices of those around them and especially their own conditioning and limitations dictated by education and traditions? Does the relationship between them have any chance?
The cinematography is remarkable. Fassbinder had the talent to compress or expand the space by using framing, giving us the feeling of suffocation and claustrophobia in interiors and loneliness in the urban landscape, always described as deserted, with no extras. But what is most obvious about this film is the emotion and sincerity. Filmed in just two weeks, ‘Ali: Fear Eats the Soul‘ was also written by Fassbinder, and those who know the German director’s biography can’t avoid parallels with his own biography and personal involvement. Fassbinder felt marginalised all his life, and El Hedi ben Salem, the actor who plays Ali, was at the time when the film was made his life partner. His ‘unprofessional’ acting fits the role very well, amplifying the feeling of inadequacy specific to the character. The actress who played the role of Emmi, Brigitte Mira, also had a rather troubled life story. Being half Jewish, she had to hide her identity during the Nazi period using false documents and even participating in the making of propaganda films. Boycotted for these reasons after the war, she was almost completely anonymous when Fassbinder cast her, at the age of 64 in this role. From here her popularity grew to become immense towards the end of her life. The silences interrupted by timid but dignified words in this film remain one of her best moments on screen. Fassbinder would produce many more formidable films in the years to come, each of them difficult to define. Some critics use the term ‘social melodrama’ to somehow include his films in a genre. As usual, these categorisations are not very important. ‘Ali: Fear Eats the Soul‘ is a film made as in one breath, of maximum sincerity and sensitivity, one of the best of the German director with whom time did not have patience.