Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974, Rainer Werner Fassbinder)

Monday 13th of February, 6:15pm in the Richard Hoggart Building cinema (Room 104)

Join us next Monday 13th February for our valentine's screening of Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. The screening will be in the RHB Cinema (104); doors 6pm for a 6:15 start. The film is 93 minutes long, so should finish before 8pm.

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul was filmed in 1974 by one of the key figures of the New German Cinema, Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The film was shot in just 15 days, starring Brigitte Mira as Emmi, a widow in her 60s, and El Hedi ben Salem (Fassbinder’s then lover) as Ali, a much younger Moroccan immigrant working as a garage mechanic. The two meet by chance when Emmi enters a bar to escape the rain (the film is worth watching for this scene alone) and almost immediately enter into a relationship.

The driving tension in the narrative is not so much Ali and Emmi’s difference (although that is clearly there) as the hostile society (1970s West Germany) that surrounds them; hostile to each of them individually - Emmi a single woman, and a cleaner, in her 60s and Ali a Moroccan Gastarbeiter (literally “guest worker”) - but especially hostile to them together.

If the film was a relatively minor endeavour compared to some of Fassbinder’s larger productions, it has endured as one of his most acclaimed works. While ostensibly a romantic film, like most of Fassbinder’s films it is pervaded by an awkward, hurried production style (the film was shot in just under two weeks) and a kind of melodrama of the banal. As Roger Ebert says in his 4/4 star review of the film: “Fassbinder leaves out all the highs and lows, and keeps only the quiet desperation in the middle.” While you can feel the hostile environment through the camerawork, the film also harbours a deep tenderness for its subjects (not least as it is possible to read the film as a reflection on Fassbinder’s own relationship with Salem).

You can read The Guardian’s recent review of a re-release here. We will be screening the film in German with English Subtitles.