Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1974 • West Germany
Starring Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbara Valentin
The wildly prolific German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder paid homage to his cinematic hero Douglas Sirk with this update of that filmmaker’s 1955 ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS. A lonely widow (Brigitte Mira) meets a much younger Arab worker (El Hedi ben Salem) in a bar during a rainstorm. They fall in love, to their own surprise—and to the outright shock of their families, colleagues, and drinking buddies. In ALI: FEAR EATS THE SOUL, Fassbinder expertly wields the emotional power of classic Hollywood melodrama to expose the racial tensions underlying contemporary German culture.
Up Next in Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
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Effi Briest
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1974 • West Germany
A young woman is married to a much older man and begins a flirtation with one of his close friends that leads to dire consequences.
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Martha
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1974 • West Germany
Starring Margit Carstensen, Karlheinz Böhm, Barbara ValentinOne of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s first forays into the classic melodrama style of his hero Douglas Sirk is a brilliantly perverse, operatically stylized portrait of a woman (M...
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Fear of Fear
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder • 1975 • West Germany
Starring Margit Cartensen, Ulrich Faulhaber, Brigitte MiraA woman in a stable-but-passionless marriage suddenly begins to lose her mind when she becomes pregnant with her second child.
