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

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:

Small Town | Soldier | Fascism | Melodrama | Nazi

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:

4-Track Stereo | Mono (Westrex Recording System)

Certification:

West Germany:12 (f) | Finland:K-16 | Sweden:15

Filming Locations:

Berlin, Germany

Company:

Universal International Pictures (UI)

Trivia:

Jim Hutton's movie debut.

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

A strange marriage of warfilm and Hollywood romanticism

The films of Douglas Sirk have been variously described as "masterpieces" and "tosh". I think the answer lies somewhere in between. Certainly the series he made at the peak of his career for Universal International in the 'fifties are romantic melodramas of a superior kind. Although photographed in gaudy chocolate-box colours with soundtracks overladen with scores drenched in aural syrup and with sometimes the most outlandish of plots - "Magnificant Obsession" for instance - they have, beneath their surface glitter, a hard edged observation of an affluent American society struggling to come to grips with moral values - "All that Heaven Allows" and "Imitation of Life" are particularly good examples. But, interesting as these film are, it is the odd man out, a film set not in America at all but in Germany and the eastern front in the closing stages of the Second World War, "A Time to Love and a Time to Die", that, in spite of its not inconsiderable unevenness, could well be his most lasting legacy. Its most striking feature is that, notwithstanding its vastly different territory, it remains a Sirk film stylistically. The director almost seems to be signing his signature with the shot of pink blossom against the opening and closing credits. Although the outer sections of a German unit under shellfire on the eastern front are the very stuff of warscape recreation at their near best, it is the long central passage where the young German soldier - surprisingly well played by John Gavin - returns on leave to his heavily bombed town, that is the most Sirkian. Here, between devastating airaids, the hero forms an idyllic romantic attachment to a vaguely remembered friend from childhood followed by a whirlwind courtship. Amazingly for the last night of his leave the couple find, amidst all the devastation, an untouched house for the consumation of their marriage, where they are tended by a kindly frau who brings them a bottle of wine from the cellar. At this point the airaid is only glimpsed through the window. At an earlier point in the leave the couple dine in an unbelievably stylish restaurant, although here at least Sirk has the honesty to interrupt the proceedings with a pretty devastating direct hit which leaves one diner running is a sea of flames. If I have reservations about some of the romantic trappings of the scenes in Germany, I have none about the intense realism of the scenes on the eastern front. Would that the film was all on this level.