This is one of the very best of the German new wave of the 1970s, and perhaps the least bleak Fassbinder film. Fassbinder greatly admired the German emigré-to-Hollywood (specifically, to filming soap operas for Universal Studios) director Douglas Sirk. "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul" is somewhere between an homage to and an adaptation of Sirk's "All that Heaven Allows" in which Jane Wyman found love with a much younger and lower-class Rock Hudson and had to endure the contempt of family and former friends.

Fassbinder upped the ante with a hunky African/Arab, El Hedi ben Salem, and a lonely older woman of lesser means and beauty than Jame Wyman in Brigitte Mira (who also appeared in other Fassbinder films, including the title role in "Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven").

It all begins with Emi, a cleaning-woman in her late-50s, venturing in from the rain to a bar that is patronized exclusively by North Africans. She withstands a lot of "What's SHE doing here?" looks. Ali, who is easily young enough to be her son, is more or less dared to go ask her to dance. Partially out of spite for his regular circle, he sits with Emi after they dance, then walks her home, goes up for a drink, stays the night. Both are lonely, she long-widowed, he crammed into a room with five fellow "guest workers" in a hostile foreign land. Both are grateful for attention from the other.

Such a love is taken by most everyone else (except -- surprisingly enough -- policemen) as an affront. Her family (including Fassbinder himself playing a loutish slacker son-in-law) explodes (her son kicking in her television). When her coworkers learn that she has taken in a "dirty Arab," they cut her off. The neighborhood grocer refuses to serve her any more.

His drinking buddies and coworkers have a more laissez-faire attitude: they do not ostracize him, but josh him mercilessly. However, as long as it is the two of them against the contempt of the world, they are reasonably happy together. Neither is particularly articulate, but their incongorous coupling seemsto be good for each of them.

Somewhat unbelievably, the racist Germans all melt simultaneously, when the couple returns from a vacation trip. Without the rejection from outside to bolster it, the relationship begins to crumble. I thought that Emi, who is shown to be strong and good-hearted, would not so easily take up again with her coworkers. The most vicious one of them has been fired while she was gone and a new, considerably younger and more attractive Yugoslavian has been hired (at a lower wage). No longer being the excluded victim, Emi seems to acquiesce in playing the same odd-woman-out game from which she so recently suffered.

Ali becomes restless. I find it very suprising that Emi does not learn to make couscous, which Ali misses. This does not seem to me to be a very difficult culinary feat. I't not like one of the 3-day, 30-ingredient, 30-step dishes of French haute cuisine, and another German woman has mastered it. Iit seems to me that someone who has shown herself willing and able to withstand intense social pressure might at least try to make something so important to her husband. (OK, he should also be able to make it for himself — again, because it is not very difficult!).

For a "new German cinema" film, and especially for a Fassbinder film, Ali's collapse counts as a happy ending. He is unconscious in the last scene, but we believe he has accepted Emi's plea that they be nice to each other and they dance again to their song. . .

As Emmi, Brigitte Mira is not pretty, not young, not educated. Having given up any hope for company, let alone passionate sex, she blossoms and withstands much abuse when the miracle of new love occurs. She maintains her dignity (and, seemingly, her resolve), and makes few demands (even for elementary civility) from anyone, including her scandalized children or her straying husband. She is not invulnerable, but she is not given to self-pity, even when she is treated outrageously. I can't imagine anyone watching the film who would not root for her to attain and maintain some degree of happiness! (I don't think I would want to know a person who rooted against her...)

Ali does not indulge in self-pity, either. He is also not educated and generally not verbal (though he repeats the proverb that is the title). He does not have a promising future, though he is relatively young and handsome in a rugged way. Although he remains fairly opaque, he, too, is likable. Two likable characters is two more than in some other Fassbinder films ("Veronika Voss" and "Chinese Roulette" spring to my mind).

The children horrified by a parent and condemning the relationship in which the parent is finding happiness is certainly a recurrent theme in Douglas Sirk films, and the sometimes garish lighting in "Ali" also pays homage to him. The camera movement and the focus on love and the pain caused by heedless beloveds remind me of the films of another German-speaking film-maker who fled Hitler, Max Ophuls, albeit at a proleterian level:the auto mechanic and the office cleaning woman are considerably less elegant than Louis Jourdan and Joan Fontaine (to take an Ophuls film with a male beloved, the great "Letter from an Unknown Woman").

All in all, I think this is a poignant film with moments of earned true feeling, strong visuals, credible insights into the lives of ordinary Arabs and Germans trying to get by in a markedly racist society. What rates the fifth star is the moving performance by Brigitte Mira.

© Stephen O. Murray, 2002


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS