All That Heaven Allows (1955) + Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) on Blu-Ray

Get the original film, All That Heaven Allows (1955), and Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974), for 20% off their individual prices!

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Starring Jane Wyman, Rock Hudson, Agnes Moorehead, Conrad Nagel, Virginia Grey
Directed by Douglas Sirk

Print: Color
Runtime: 89 min.
Genre: Drama


This heartbreakingly beautiful indictment of 1950s American mores by Douglas Sirk (Written on the Wind) follows the blossoming love between a well-off suburban widow (Magnificent Obsession’s Jane Wyman) and her handsome and earthy younger gardener (Seconds’ Rock Hudson). After their romance prompts the scorn of her selfish children and snooty country club friends, she must decide whether to pursue her own happiness or carry on a lonely, hemmed-in existence for the sake of the approval of others. With the help of ace cinematographer Russell Metty (Spartacus), Sirk imbued nearly every shot with a vivid and distinct emotional tenor. A profoundly felt film about class and conformity in small-town America, All That Heaven Allows is a pinnacle of expressionistic Hollywood melodrama.

Ali: Fears Eats The Soul (1974)

Starring Anita Bucher, El Hedi ben Salem, Irm Hermann, Elma Karlowa, Gusti Kreissl
Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Print: black/white
Runtime: 94 min.
Genre: Drama


Rainer Werner Fassbinder, already the director of almost twenty films by the age of 29, paid homage to his cinematic hero, Douglas Sirk, with this updated version of Sirk's All That Heaven Allows. Lonely widow Emmi Kurowsky (Brigitte Mira) meets Arab worker Ali (El Hedi ben Salem) in a bar during a rainstorm. To their own surprise (and to the shock of family, colleagues, and drinking buddies) they fall in love. In Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (Angst essen seele auf), Fassbinder expertly uses the emotional power of the melodrama to underscore the racial tensions threatening German culture.