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Tous les autres s'appellent Ali

Original title: Angst essen Seele auf
  • 1974
  • Tous publics
  • 1h 33m
IMDb RATING
8.0/10
25K
YOUR RATING
El Hedi ben Salem and Brigitte Mira in Tous les autres s'appellent Ali (1974)
Feel-Good RomancePolitical DramaDramaRomance

A lonely widow meets a much younger Moroccan worker in a bar during a rainstorm. They fall in love, to their own surprise and to the outright shock of their families, colleagues, and drinkin... Read allA lonely widow meets a much younger Moroccan worker 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.A lonely widow meets a much younger Moroccan worker 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.

  • Director
    • Rainer Werner Fassbinder
  • Writer
    • Rainer Werner Fassbinder
  • Stars
    • Brigitte Mira
    • El Hedi ben Salem
    • Barbara Valentin
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    8.0/10
    25K
    YOUR RATING
    • Director
      • Rainer Werner Fassbinder
    • Writer
      • Rainer Werner Fassbinder
    • Stars
      • Brigitte Mira
      • El Hedi ben Salem
      • Barbara Valentin
    • 77User reviews
    • 122Critic reviews
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Awards
      • 4 wins & 1 nomination total

    Photos168

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    Top cast25

    Edit
    Brigitte Mira
    Brigitte Mira
    • Emmi
    El Hedi ben Salem
    El Hedi ben Salem
    • Ali
    Barbara Valentin
    Barbara Valentin
    • Barbara
    Irm Hermann
    Irm Hermann
    • Krista
    Elma Karlowa
    Elma Karlowa
    • Mrs. Kargus
    Anita Bucher
    • Mrs. Ellis
    Gusti Kreissl
    Gusti Kreissl
    • Paula
    Doris Mattes
    • Mrs. Angermeyer
    • (as Doris Mathes)
    Margit Symo
    Margit Symo
    • Hedwig
    Katharina Herberg
    Katharina Herberg
    • Girl in bar
    Lilo Pempeit
    • Mrs. Münchmeyer
    Peter Gauhe
    Peter Gauhe
    • Bruno Kurowski
    Marquard Bohm
    Marquard Bohm
    • Gruber
    Walter Sedlmayr
    Walter Sedlmayr
    • Angermayer
    Hannes Gromball
    Hannes Gromball
    • Waiter
    Hark Bohm
    Hark Bohm
    • Doctor
    Rudolf Waldemar Brem
    Rudolf Waldemar Brem
    • Car mechanic…
    Karl Scheydt
    Karl Scheydt
    • Albert Kurowski
    • Director
      • Rainer Werner Fassbinder
    • Writer
      • Rainer Werner Fassbinder
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews77

    8.025.2K
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    Featured reviews

    boboxbury

    The film which made the greatest impression on me

    This is the film which made the greatest impression on me ever. As a young serviceman stationed in West Germany throughout the 1970's & 80's I used to watch a great deal of German Television, to try and understand the German people and their culture.

    One night,wife and children asleep, I happened upon: "Ein Film von Rainer Werner Fassbinder"

    What a revelation!! Suddenly here was a film which showed all human life in its most passionate, desperate, vital but delicate form.

    It certainly made a great impression on me and even now, 26 years later, I can still see, feel and react to each thought, idea aand feeling that coursed through me at that time.

    Truly a wonderful film and a genius of a director.

    It helped me understand love.
    10RWiggum

    Sad. True. Beautiful.

    Munich, in the mid-70s: She enters the exotic bar because it's raining and maybe because she's a little curious what this place with that strange music is like. He asks her for a dance because his friends tell him to do so. He accompanies her home. He stays for the night. The fall in love. They marry.

    All that sounds like your average Hollywood romance. But that's only half the story of 'Fear Eats the Soul'. Here's the other half: She, Emmi Kurowski, is a 60 year old, widowed cleaner, mother of three married children. He, Ali, is a black foreign worker from Morocco, 20 years younger than her, speaking a rather bad German (a more faithful translation of the German original title 'Angst essen Seele auf', a quote from Ali, would be 'Fear Eat Soul'). This film is not a cheesy romance, it is the story of two people who love each other and struggle with the rest of the world to be accepted.

    But the people around them have problems. The neighbors are talking about them, Emmi's colleagues ignore her, the merchant refuses to serve them, and Emmi's children don't want to understand it - her son Bruno even destroys the TV set in his anger.

    Rainer Werner Fassbinder is arguably the greatest German director ever, and with more than 40 films, TV series, TV films plus 16 theater plays he wrote, directed and often also (co-)starred in in a career that lasted only a mere 15 years, he is certainly one of the most efficient directors in film history. His best films are a criticism of German society after World War II by simple, but memorable stories with very well observed characters. And 'Fear Eats the Soul' displays Fassbinder's qualities best. In very simple shots (facial expressions, the use doors to stress the loneliness of his characters), he makes this films very emotional.

    The film is sometimes described as naive. That's wrong. Maybe it is naive to believe that a 60 year old widow and a black 40 year old worker will fall in love. But the rest is as well-observed as a film can be: The fact that people's reactions change when they realize that it's easier to accept them and take advantage of them. That Emmi eagerly joins her colleagues as soon as they have found a new victim. That Ali goes to the waitress of his bar to get the two things Emmi can't give him - sex and his favorite dish.

    And then the film has some amazing acting. But from the entire cast, Brigitte Mira as Emmi Kurowski stands out. Actually a comedic actress, she shines in this drama as a woman who struggles for acceptance. Her speech outside a restaurant, when all the waiters stare at them but don't serve them, is heartbreaking, her entire performance is unforgettable.

    At first sight, 'Fear Eats the Soul' is a small, simple romantic film. But look closer and you'll see it is so much more, it is a comment on subliminal prejudices and selfishness. It shows what a film can do, even if its budget is tiny, if it only believes in the power of its story.
    9evanston_dad

    A German Update of "All That Heaven Allows"

    Rainer Werner Fassbinder's quietly powerful film is a sort-of remake of Douglas Sirk's "All That Heaven Allows," a film and director greatly admired by Fassbinder, but it has a sharper edge than Sirk's film. In "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul," the couple fighting a society's prejudice and resentment of their unconventional love must fight some of their own prejudices as well. In Sirk's film, the only thing imposing on the complete happiness of Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson was the busy-body ostracism of family and friends who didn't approve of the relationship between a rich society widow and her working-class gardener. In "Ali," Fassbinder suggests that happiness isn't something that's gained from the approval of others, but rather is the responsibility of the individuals involved. One of the things I liked best about this film is that as the German society gets used to the unconventional romance and begins to accept our two protagonists, the couple themselves begin to struggle to maintain a grip on the happiness they thought would be their's by right.

    Fassbinder's unconventional couple are a frumpy German widow and a Moroccan immigrant 10-15 years younger than her. I gather from this film that Moroccans (or Arabs in general) were about as hated and feared in Germany at the time of this film's release as blacks were in America during the worst of the civil rights movement. So you can imagine how the couple's initial courting and subsequent marriage is handled by their neighbors, friends and family. Fassbinder himself was gay, and many suggest that the film is an allegory for the way homosexuals were persecuted. Fassbinder's private life undoubtedly informed his film, but the movie is really more universal than that. It really applies to anyone who's ever suffered the judgement of a group of people over something that didn't even affect those people, and really, who can honestly say that they've never been subjected to that?

    Fassbinder directs in a low-key, unfussy style, yet he creates images and scenes that linger in the head long after the film is over. It's a lovely film, very well acted, scripted and directed. It's not exactly sad, because it argues that societies are able eventually to adapt to new things and accept things they originally rejected. But it's not exactly happy either, because it suggests that relationships don't necessarily become easier just because external obstacles are removed.

    Grade: A
    8ian_harris

    Strangely compelling

    A thought experiment. You put Mike Leigh and Spike Lee together and ask them to remake Harold and Maude with even fewer laughs and without much music. Sounds awful?

    This movie is actually strangely compelling. It is minimal in so many ways - in particular the minimal use of language. I only have "get by on a visit with occasional reference to phrase book" German and even less Arabic, yet I could have managed this movie without subtitles. So little is actually said in words. Yet so much is said.

    This movie seemed so relevant today - when the gossipy women worry about bombs and terrorism because "Ali" is an "Arab" (actually he is a Berber) you think about our society some 30 years on and despair a little. The scene when the frau tells her family that she has married "Ali" will stick with me for some time.

    It's hard to explain why, but there is something really special about this movie and it is well worth seeing.
    9Galina_movie_fan

    "The story of impossible love":

    This powerful and gentle film tells the story of love and marriage of Emmi, a 60+ widowed German cleaning lady and Ali, a Moroccan immigrant mechanic who is more than 20 (I think close to 30) years her younger. Their affair and the decision to marry shocked everyone who knew Emmi: her grown children, her neighbors, coworkers (mostly, middle-aged widows as herself) and even the owner of a neighborhood grocery shop where she has been a loyal customer for years. The way clever and observant Fassbinder looks at their struggle to keep the relationship is deeply pessimistic - the couple could survive the obstacles that society would create for them. They can survive disapproval, misunderstanding and prejudice but at the very moment they think all problems are in the past, they find the emptiness inside and two lonely hearts together are even worse than one. The more I think of it the more I realize that "Ali: Fear Eats the Soul" is among the best, the most poignant, gentlest and heartbreaking descriptions of unavailability for happiness ever filmed. What makes the movie even more poignant is the fact that both Fassbinder and El Hedi ben Salem, the man whom Fassbinder loved and who played Ali committed suicide in the same year, Fassbinder - a few weeks after El Hedi. The film is also a love letter to El Hedi. In one of the film's most moving scene, Emmi looks at the man with whom she so suddenly and desperately fell in love with admiration, longing, and wise sadness while he dries himself after the shower. It is not only Emmi looks at Ali, it is Rainer looks with love and affection at the man he loved through the lenses of his camera.

    Storyline

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    Did you know

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    • Trivia
      The film was shot in only 14 days
    • Quotes

      Girl in bar: Well... are you coming?

      Ali: No.

      Girl in bar: And why not?

      Ali: Cock broken.

    • Crazy credits
      Before the introductory credits there is the line: Das Glück ist nicht immer lustig (Happiness is not always fun)
    • Connections
      Edited into Quand la peur dévore l'âme (2007)
    • Soundtracks
      Al Asfouriah
      Written by Philemon Wahba

      Performed by Sabah

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    FAQ

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    Details

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    • Release date
      • June 5, 1974 (France)
    • Country of origin
      • West Germany
    • Official sites
      • Criterion (United States)
      • Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation (Germany)
    • Languages
      • German
      • Arabic
    • Also known as
      • Ali: Fear Eats the Soul
    • Filming locations
      • Munich, Bavaria, Germany
    • Production companies
      • Tango Film
      • Filmverlag der Autoren
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • DEM 260,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $8,144
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $11,623
      • Feb 16, 2003
    • Gross worldwide
      • $16,257
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 33 minutes
    • Sound mix
      • Mono
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.37 : 1

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