A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958)

User Rating:

7.8/10   

Director:

Douglas Sirk

Writers:

Orin Jannings (writer)
Erich Maria Remarque (novel)

Release Date:

15 September 1958 (Sweden)

Genre:

Drama | Romance | War

Tagline:

Born out of the blazing passions of war!

Plot:

In 1944, a company of German soldiers on the Russian front are numbed by the horrors and hardships of...

Plot Keywords:

Soldier | WWII | Nazi | Melodrama | Foreign Language Adaptation

Awards:

Nominated for Oscar. Another 2 nominations

Cast

John Gavin	...	Ernst Graeber
Liselotte Pulver	...	Elizabeth Kruse Graeber (as Lilo Pulver)
Jock Mahoney	...	Immerman
Don DeFore	...	Hermann Boettcher
Keenan Wynn	...	Reuter
Erich Maria Remarque	...	Professor Pohlmann
Dieter Borsche	...	Captain Rahe
Barbara Rütting	...	Woman Guerrilla
Thayer David	...	Oscar Binding
Charles Régnier	...	Joseph
Dorothea Wieck	...	Frau Lieser
Kurt Meisel	...	Heini
Agnes Windeck	...	Frau Witte
Clancy Cooper	...	Sauer
John Van Dreelen	...	Political Officer

Also Known As:

Will o' the Wisp

Runtime:

132 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | German | Russian

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Westrex Recording System) | 4-Track Stereo

Certification:

West Germany:12 (f) | Argentina:13 | Finland:K-16 (cut) (1959) | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Berlin, Germany

Company:

Universal International Pictures (UI)

Trivia:

Douglas Sirk and Erich Maria Remarque became close friends during the shooting. Later, in Switzerland, they were even neighbors.

Quotes:

Professor Pohlmann: Without doubt, there would be no need for faith.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Assis dans le noir - Wesley Strick parle du secret de Douglas Sirk (2007) (V)

Soundtrack:

A TIME TO LOVE

It speaks for those who never had a voice before in WWII films

This film complements "The Downfall" in putting a human face on the Germans who fought during WWII and the suffering of the people of Dresden during the allied bombing, but it beat the "Downfall" by 47 years!! The problem is that Sirk is a highly underrated director because he shot mostly "melodramas" in the 1950's America, starring the likes of Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman (who was Ronald Reagan's wife at the time!!), so his German films are not even known in America. This is one of them. It's an important film that speaks for the simple people, the common people of Germany, who also suffered on the German side. And the writing credits are not bad, including Erich Maria Remarque who wrote "All Quiet on the Western Front." This film and "The Downfall" should be seen along with "The Fog of War" in which Robert McNamara, who was Secretary of Defense during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and the Vietnam War, confesses that if the Germans and the Japanese had won the war, he and his superiors would have been tried for war crimes for ordering the fire bombing of both Dresden and Tokyo during the war. War is hell and everyone --bar none-- on all sides has committed atrocities. McNamara, at 87, has the courage to admit that: "Sometimes you have to do evil to do good," as he put it. "The victor writes history..." he added. Films like "A Time to Love and a Time to Die" and "The Downfall" add a bit of revisionary touch to the cracks in that history...