A Time To Love And A Time To Die [DVD]

After "All Quiet on the Western Front", fans of Erich Maria Remarque, watched a movie called "A Time To Love and A Time To Die".Based on the book with the same name, it is a love story set in last war years of World War II in Germany.When others were drumming the Victor's side of things, this movie dared to look into German commoner's lives and their tragic fates.This movie has nothing to do with pro and cons of German involvement and guilt about having unleashed the Storm.It just deals with the lives of two selected young individuals, who witness at first hand what War is really all about.Add a slight love story and tension caused by your own surroundings (Gestapo, SS, Propaganda machine, etc.), and you will see that this is far more than your common Drama.Everyone can recognize him/herself in the two main characters.It is a lesson of life versus death.It tells you how destructive war can be, for those who are living it and have nothing to say about it.The storms, or winds of war, are terrible companions, when they touch you personally.This is the message this transliteration tries to convey, and may I say, rather successfully, despite the Hollywood cast included in it.John Gavin plays the leading role, and for once, he is given a fair chance to prove that he was not just another "beau", but truly a full-bred actor who could incarnate a true-to-life character.Liselotte Pulver, as his fiancee, bride-to-be, appears as a very young and very inexperienced girl, overwhelmed by this immense tide of war.There is nothing romantic in all this, no pink dresses, no sweet lulls.Just the harsh realities in war-torn Germany.How to survive the bombings, how to survive the political police, and so on and so forth.This is truly another Anti-War movie.For those who understand what War is really all about.As I started writing this, I had mentioned that it is finally being decently transferred onto DVD.I did own an old PAL VHS tape of this movie, which was decent, but not satisfactory, considering that this movie had a very wide screen ratio.Pan & Scan had marred the entire action and the desolated landscape scenes of this movie.Now, on DVD, you get the best transfer ever.It is in the correct 2.35:1 anamorphic aspect ratio, sports a conventional but full and crisp 2.0 Mono soundtrack and has been digitally restored in High Definition.You also receive a second DVD with tons of extra material for your eye's delight.Did I mention? It was directed by one of the masters of the genre: Douglas Sirk (Imitation of Life, Written on the Wind, Battle Hymn, etc.)and the score is by the great master of spectacular film music himself, Miklos Rozsa.I must insist on this. Get a copy before it's gone.You won't regret it one bit.It is part of our cultural heritage, and as such, it has to be collected.This is film history.

While this is one of Douglas Sirk's best films - if not really on a par with masterpieces like The Tarnished Angels (Masters of Cinema) (Blu-ray), All That Heaven Allows [DVD] or Imitation Of Life [DVD] [1959] - and this Blu-ray transfer looks gorgeous, I couldn't believe my eyes and ears when I switched to Daniel Schmid's Sirk documentary "Mirage de la vie", a 50-min interview with Sirk and his wife filmed for Télévision Suisse-Romande four years before his death in 1987. The film clips are subtitled in French, which is rather ugly to look at, but wouldn't make the film any less enjoyable. The problem is, the Sirk interwiev is in German but voiced-over in French (by Schmid himself, with a rather strong Swiss-German accent) and subtitled in English to boot. For someone like myself who speaks German, English and French, that makes it all but unwatchable. Which is a pity, especially since there must be a German version without the nerve-racking voice-over rotting away in some German television archive as I distinctly remember having seen the film on German TV ca. 1984.

Films by Douglas Sirk, with their subtle manipulations of surfaces, may not present themselves with the gravitas of, say, a Bergman or Herzog, but they are deadly serious -- and never more personally so than here. In A Time to Love and a Time to Die, Sirk, Danish born and German bred, films circumstances similar to those in which his son died. This is Sirk's penultimate film. In collaboration with cinematographer Russell Metty, he uses his long experience to make it one of his most visually striking. War may be turbulent, but among its fruits are static tableaux, rubble-ridden emptinesses, frozen landscapes within which the living move furtively, as if in nightmares that may all too soon dissolve into worse nightmares. (Even twelve years after the 1945 armistice, the film's producers had no problem finding desolate, bombed out locations.)In such a death world is there any place for fictions such as morality, for games such as art? In such a world is love mere encumbrance? An expensive luxury? Scene by scene the film examines these and corollary questions from different angles (as a gem's facets describe different contiguous angles). The film as a whole is indeed greater than the sum of its angles, its facets. It glows from within with the fitful light of human empathy. Here is no tract against war; here is an actual demonstration of how the mindset of war devalues our humanity.Because it portrays Germans not as types but as individuals (including Nazified individuals) A Time to Love and a TIme to Die was not warmly received after release. It waited fifty years for the respect it was due, respect provided by this superb edition.

The film is difficult to see in the USA on DVD so this UK version is most appreciated especially the extras. Contemporary critics including Jon Halliday have written extensively on this work so there is little need to delve into its excellent poignant and romantic nature. But the extras are significant especially one feature suggesting that the film may also be Sirk's hope for his estranged son who would die on the Russian Front whom he has never seen since his divorce.

Not your normal type of war film, about love and the chance that fate can play in life, intelligent story from a well written book and watch for the author who plays a part in the movie. Good acting from a fine if little known cast. Nicely directed by Douglas Sirk.

This is an amazing DVD - an American-made film about World War II (based on a novel by Erich Maria Remarque) in which all the characters are German and Americans are never mentioned - and the DVD is Korean-produced. But what a moving film it is: a Wehrmacht soldier on the Russian front, disgusted by the brutality of war, returns on furlough to his home-town in Germany to find it practically destroyed. He locates the pile of rubble that used to be his parents' home, but cannot locate his parents. As he searches for them, he finds a young woman whose outspoken father is now languishing in a prison camp and who, herself, has been pushed into one small room of the family home to make way for others who have been bombed out of theirs. One of her housemates is an officious harridan who makes it her business to spy on, and report, any perceived criticism against the Nazi regime. Naturally, even as bombs rain down upon the soldier and the girl, they fall in love. But it is a bittersweet affair, because dangling above their heads like the sword of Damocles is the end of his furlough. And probable death on the Russian front.Remarque, whose books were banned by the Nazis, must certainly have watched the war from the safety of his home in the United States with immense disquietude. His sympathy for what his former countrymen were enduring comes across movingly in `A Time to Love and a Time to Die,' as does his revulsion of small-minded people who have been handed great power, like the harridan in the girl's home: Remarque's sister was beheaded during the war after an accusation was made that she caused low morale for having voiced the opinion that Germany could not win the war.John Gavin plays the soldier and Keenan Wynn has a bit role, but all the other actors were unknown to me; Remarque has a small part, as well. The film, made in 1958, has the inevitable whiff of the fifties, but that did not stand in the way of my enjoyment of it. And while all the writing on the back of the box is in Korean, the actors speak English and the Korean subtitles can be removed.In the crowded annals of World War II films, `A Time to Love and a Time to Die' occupies a niche all of its own, and one no less interesting, exciting, or moving than the others. Highly recommended.

I consider this a great classic film! Based on the book by Erich Maria Remarque, who also wrote All Quiet on the Western Front (WWI; also made into a movie), it is a classic anti-war statement.This movie encourages the viewer to think, and deserves to be watched repeatedly to note the details which are included by the director. It is faithful to the original book and includes a cameo of the Author, who helped write the screen adaptation.I believe that I first saw this movie on Los Angeles TV in about 1962. Hadn't seen it since, until I connected to the internet and started searching for it. I had a hard time tracking down a VHS copy, since it was out-of-print. Finally I found a rental copy, and I also read the book on which it was based.Recently I found the movie on DVD through Amazon. The DVD version was produced in South Korea with Korean (and French) subtitles, with (spoken) English Dialog. I think the video quality is excellent for a 1950's movie, better than I remember the VHS rental copy.

I had never heard of this movie until one night I stumbled upon it on late night cable. This is an incredible war movie which tells the story of a young German soldier (John Gavin) who must deal with the horrors of war while the Russians are knocking at the front door of the Third Reich. The German soldier willingly participates in the brutalities committed against his enemy while fighting an internal battle that all he has been taught is morally wrong. He sees his home town and own family destroyed by war and begins to question its worth. I wont go into how it ends but it is pretty climatic. This movie was made before my time but If you ever saw Gavin in his small part in Psycho, then you know just how good an actor he was. If you are a fan of war movies which make you think, take on the topics nobody wants to discuss, and the dark realities of war, then go get this movie!

A Time to Love and A Time to die is a classic film, and an usual one, since it tells a story about the horrors suffered by the average German people in World War II. I have many World War II films, but none are like this. If you're looking for a combat film you will be disappointed. To me, this is romance in the truest since with a powerful message about the insanity of war and how it affects the general public no matter what nationalities are involved. As General MacArthur said at the end of the war when accepting the surrender of the Japanese on the battleship Missouri, "War is man's greatest sin." A Time to Love and a Time to Die is a small snippet of that great apocalypse that fell on the world from 1939 to 1945. This is a great movie that gives us something to reflect upon these many years after the end of the war.

I have to admit that the only reason why I bought this DVD was the fact that Jock Mahoney plays a part in it. I had to watch the movie three times before I figured out which part Mahoney was playing. It's a very short scene during the war.Being a big fan of Douglas Sirk's glossy melodramas I expected more. This film cannot live up to his other classics like "All that Heaven allows", "Sleep, My Love" or "Magnificent Obsession" (Rock Hudson & Jane Wyman version).Lilo Pulver and John Gavin play their parts well, but both had better parts in other movies.