Double Feature

Ali: Fear Eats the Soul

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. (Janus Films)

The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant

A turning point in Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s brief, but unbelievably prolific career, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant marked his shift from Godard-inspired enfant terrible to Sirkian romantic. His characters were no longer to deliver dry polemics, but heave, cry, and laugh with implosive energy. His abusive fashion designer Von Kant distills Fassbinder’s manifest obsessions with restless creative appetites, as her life soars and sinks on the affections of a vapid young model. Shot with insane visual acuity by the iconic Michael Ballhaus, this film is an art house pillar and one of the most memorable creations from the German provocateur.

“A brilliantly directed and performed psychodrama.” – Michael Scheinfeld, TV Guide

“The set and costume design and the hothouse atmosphere represent so much high-camp gloss; but once again this careful stylization enables Fassbinder to balance between parody of an emotional stance and intense commitment to it. He films in long, elegant takes, completely at the service of his all-female cast, who are uniformly sensational.” – Time Out