Tough but tender masterpiece is one of Fassbinder's great achievements - especially as he apparently very seldom shot more than one take of its scenes. This is one of three movie variations on the same story - see also Douglas Sirk's 1995 original, All That Heaven Allows, and Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven (2002) - and all three are master-works.
   Told with simplicity and great force, this is classic, pared-down tale of "forbidden" love triumphing against overwhelming odds. The unlikely protagonists are a cleaning-woman in her early sixties, Emmy (Brigitte Mira) and Ali (El Hedi Ben Salem), a laconic Moroccan aged around 40 who has moved to her city of Munich in search of work.
   For Ali, prejudice is part of daily life in the Federal Republic of Germany. Emmy is a free-spirit who has long bucked convention - she married a Polish immigrant during the war, and eschews widowly black for brightly-coloured clothes. Unfortunately her three children have turned out rather more conservative than their mother, and they are outraged when she falls in love with - and quickly weds - Ali.
   Married life proves far from blissful as the couple encountering hostility from several quarters, and we fear the worst when Ali wanders from the path of fidelity - surely Fassbinder isn't going to endorse the petty stereotyping of those who regard Ali and his fellow gastarbeiters as unreliable, unwashed, libidinous ingrates? Of course not - while the finale isn't exactly upbeat, there are grounds for hoping that Ali and Emmy's bond is sufficiently strong to ensure some degree of long-term happiness.
   Fear Eats the Soul - the title is taken from one of Ali's Berber aphorisms - is a stunningly caustic vision of early-seventies West Germany, a society riddled with racism, gossip, small-mindedness and jealousy. It hovers on the very edge of caricature and camp - the supporting cast (which includes Fassbinder himself as Emmy's ignorant son-in-law) turn in performances that are nearly all deliberately pitched as mannered, arch and artificial - but Mira's superb, heartbreaking central performance continually ensures that the picture avoids becoming a mere exercise in bleak social pantomime or downbeat dystopian satire.
   Though unremarkable unpreposessing at first glance, her Emmy emerges as one of the most admirable and dynamic characters in all cinema, a grass-roots, plain-talking crusader against ignorance whose indomitable pursuit of decency and fairness reaps its deserved reward. Fassbinder takes his no-nonsense directorial approach from his heroine, crafting a series of short, to-the-point scenes with framing and camerawork deployed to unfussily dramatise how embattled, isolated individuals are surrounded by disapproving busybodies in a range of impersonal Munich interiors and exteriors.

Neil Young
6th April, 2009

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original title : Angst essen Seele Auf
alternative title : Ali - Fear Eats the Soul
director : Rainer Werner Fassbinder
country : West Germany
year : 1974
run-time : 92m (BBFC)

seen : 5th April, 2009
cinema : The Star and Shadow, Newcastle
format : 16mm
paid : £4

MVP : Brigitte Mira
respected second opinion : Neil Young, Jigsaw Lounge (2002)