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

A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958) (Blu-Ray) (*)

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Screened, competed or awarded at:
Berlin International Film Festival
Golden Globes
Oscar Academy Awards

Language Selections:
English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 )
English ( Subtitles )

Product Origin/Format:
United Kingdom ( Blu-Ray/Region B )

Running Time:
132 min

Aspect Ratio:
Widescreen (2.35:1)

Special Features:
Cast/Crew Interview(s)
Interactive Menu
Photo Gallery
Scene Access
Special Edition
Trailer(s)
Booklet

Movie filmed in 1958 and produced in:
United States ( USA, Canada )

Directed By:
Douglas Sirk

Written By:
Orin Jannings
Erich Maria Remarque

Actors:
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

Synopsis:

Douglas Sirk - the master of the Hollywood melodrama - turns back to his native Germany at the time of the Second World War for the film that would stand as his penultimate American feature: A Time to Love and a Time to Die. A CinemaScope production staged on a grand scale, Sirk's picture nevertheless pulsates with an intimacy that has known longing for too long, and seethes with the repression of emotions poised to explode like bombs. John Gavin plays Ernst Gräber, a soldier on the Russian-German Front in 1944 venturing home to Hamburg on a rare furlough. Upon arrival, he discovers a city that bears little resemblance to the one he left behind - and so, through the rubble of the air-raids, he searches desperately for fragments of his family's shattered lives. But amid the shards, he falls in love with Elisabeth (Liselotte Pulver), the charming daughter of his parents' doctor, and thus activates a magnetism that compels both individuals toward one another in love, even as it hurtles them headlong into epochal death. Adapted from the novel by Erich Maria Remarque (the author of All Quiet on the Western Front, who also makes a cameo appearance in Sirk's picture), A Time to Love and a Time to Die takes its literary source and sculpts it anew out of matter made from color, decor, and performance - and arguably bests the novel on all aesthetic levels. Yet perhaps nothing can better summarise the power of Sirk's film - or of his entire body of work - than these words from the movie's trailer: 'Their pounding hearts drowned out the sound of chaos thundering around them.'

In 1944, a company of German soldiers on the Russian front are numbed by the horrors and hardships of war when Private Ernst Graeber's long awaited furlough comes through. Back home in Germany, he finds his home bombed. While hopelessly searching for his parents, he meets lovely Elizabeth Kruse, daughter of a political prisoner; together they try to wrest sanity and survival from a world full of hatred.

A German soldier fighting on the Russian front in 1944 gets a furlough and returns to his small village to rebuild his life.

This product was added to our catalog on Monday 14 October, 2013.

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