Rainer Werner Fassbinder was the most prolific and prodigious figure in the New German Cinema of the 1970s. In a film career which lasted only from 1968-1981, he directed 41 full-length films for cinema and television, including the fifteen-and-a-half hour Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980).
A movie nut from childhood, Fassbinder tried and failed to get into film school. Bisexual and rebellious, he dropped out of drama school to participate in Munich’s underground theatre scene, quickly establishing himself as a playwright and director, and building up a close-knit ’family’ of actors who stayed with him as he embarked on low budget avant-garde film experiments in the late 60s.
By the mid 70s he had embraced a more emotionally expressive aesthetic, heavily influenced by the florid studio melodramas of Douglas Sirk (born Klaus Detlef Sierck). In particular, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul borrows from Sirk’s Rock Hudson, Jane Wyman love story All That Heaven Allows. A lonely 60-something widow (Brigitte Mira) meets a much younger Moroccan 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. Fassbinder expertly wields the emotional power of classic Hollywood melodrama to expose the racial tensions underlying contemporary German culture.
Sunday’s Pantheon screening will feature a 20-minute introduction and talkback.
Jun 15: Intro by Alla Gadassik, Associate Professor, Media History & Theory, Emily Carr University of Art + Design
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Brigitte Mira, El Hedi ben Salem, Barbara Valentin, Irm Hermann
Germany
1974
In German with English subtitles
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Credits
Screenwriter
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Cinematography
Jürgen Jürges
Editor
Thea Eymèsz
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