Film Review
Fear Eats the Soul, Rainer
Fassbinder's humanist masterpiece, was one of the defining films of New
German Cinema in the mid-1970s. It is both an incisive depiction
of the social conflict and racial prejudice that was endemic in
post-war Germany and an extraordinarily powerful love story, one of the
most poignant and meaningful that has ever been committed to
celluloid. The film was rewarded with two prizes at the Cannes
Film Festival in 1974 and is widely considered to be the absolute
pinnacle of Fassbinder's achievements. It is certainly the most
accessible and moving works from this unique creative talent, a film
that once seen you will never forget.
In between making
Martha and
Effi Briest, Fassbinder had a four
week slot which he filled by writing and shooting this film. What
started out as an exercise in filmmaking technique became one of his most personal
and inspired films. It was also to be Fassbinder's most blatant
tribute to Douglas Sirk, the American filmmaker he most admired and who
had an enormous impact on his oeuvre. The similarities between
Fear Eats the Soul and Sirk's
All That Heaven Allows (1955)
are readily apparent. Both films involve two lonely individuals
from very different social milieu who are rejected by their respective
communities as they embark on a passionate romance. Like Sirk
before him, Fassbinder used the popular but oft-reviled melodrama form
to critique contemporary society. Whereas Sirk was preoccupied with
class and bourgeois addiction to materialism, Fassbinder
dared to examine the issue of racial intolerance, one of the great
taboos of his time.
Much of the searing humanist impact of
Fear in the Soul derives from the
performances of its two lead actors. Brigitte Mira surely
deserved an Oscar for her heartrending portrayal of Emmi but was
honoured with a lesser accolade, at the German Film Awards in
1974. One of her country's most respected character actors, Mira
had a reputation for playing unsavoury characters in a sympathetic
light. Interestingly, she began her career in the propaganda
series
Liese und Miese,
cast as a character who was meant to be the antithesis of the good
Nazi. The part of the handsome Moroccan was played, with just as
much conviction and human feeling, by El Hedi ben Salem, Fassbinder's
lover at the time.
The fact that Rainer Fassbinder spent so little time on this film could
be what makes it such a potent piece of cinema. This is a film
that springs from the heart, not the intellect. Lacking the
ponderous political undertones and laboured stylisation of some of
Fassbinder's more elaborate and considered films,
Fear eats the Soul has a raw,
visceral quality, superficially very simple, and yet inordinately
complex when you look beneath the surface.
Racial prejudice takes many forms and this film shows us that overt
racism may not be its worst facet. Perhaps more disturbing is the
pressure that society places on racial minorities to conform, to
relinquish all vestige of their cultural identity to be
accepted. Once the outsider has been tamed, a more
insidious form of racism takes over, one that is nurtured not by fear,
but by an instinctive dislike for the unlike from which none of us is
immune.
Having overcome flagrant hostility to her union with a coloured man,
the female protagnist in this film reveals that she too has xenophobic
tendencies. Like the good little Nietzschen disciple that she was
in her youth, she will not be happy until her husband has been
completely assimilated into German society. The question is:
which is stronger, love or innate racist sentiment? Fassbinder opts for
the optimistic outcome, but in doing so he provokes his audience to
reflect on what is arguably the greatest social concern of our
time.
© James Travers 2010
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Next Rainer Werner Fassbinder film:
Fontane - Effi Briest (1974)
Film Synopsis
One rainy evening, Emmi Kurowski, a 60-year-old cleaning lady, ducks into
an Arab bar to avoid being soaked. She immediately notices a
Moroccan worker, twenty years her junior, and invites him to dance with
her. The Moroccan introduces himself as Ali and an unlikely
friendship develops between the two. Emmi takes her new friend
back to her small apartment, where she has lived alone since the death
of her husband. After a meal, Ali is about to leave when Emmi
invites him to spend the night in her spare bedroom. The
grateful Moroccan accepts and the inevitable happens - the two lonely
people end up in bed together. Emmi and Ali's burgeoning
love affair prompts a hostile reaction from their entourage.
Emmi's family and fellow workers ostracise her, disgusted that she
should have stooped so low as to sleep with a filthy Arab. Ali's
friends are equally incensed and cannot understand why he should live
with an old whore. Then Emmi is warned by her landlord's
son that she has broken the terms of her tenancy agreement by
subletting her apartment. In a moment of panic, she declares that she
and Ali are soon to be married. When she explains this to her
lover, the Moroccan says this is a good idea, so they get married
without delay. This merely exacerbates the rift between Emmi and
her family, so she suggests that she and Ali go away for a long
holiday. When they return, the antagonism appears to have abated
and Emmi and Ali are accepted as an ordinary married couple. But,
as Emmi strives for social acceptance, Ali fears that his Arab identity
is under threat, and their relationship slowly begins to fall apart...
© James Travers
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