Watch A Time to Love and a Time to Die For Free

One of my all time favorites.

Am I Missing Something?

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

Douglas Sirk's excellent war drama is unfortunately not as well-known as his luridly coloured 50's melodramas "Written On The Wind, "All That Heaven Allows" etc. That's too bad, because it deserves to be, and is one of the best films of it's type. It tells a harrowing, yet hopeful story. The German Army is crumbling in 1944, when war weary John Gavin (suprisingly good) is granted furlough. Hope comes to him through falling in love with a charming girl, Lilo Pulver, whom he kisses by the emerging blossoms next to the river. They marry, and enjoy whatever happiness they can. They revel in it, as you you do, but a gloom hangs over the film. This is also represented by the colour scheme employed by Sirk. Instead of the bright 'Scope of WOTW or ATHA here we have slate greys and smoky blues. His use of mis en scene here is also kind of remarkable, with the grotesque German officer who Gavin visits having what seem to be hundreds of dead trophy animals adorning his walls. Memento's of the dead, perhaps? Remarque wrote the novel, and also appears in the film. Challenging, moving and heartbreaking, with an ending that shocks and angers, yet is also justified.

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...

Re: Shannon Box's ([email protected]) observation: "In short, this is an important film of significant value. Not because it is about history, but because it is about the redeeming quality of humanity, even if displayed in the setting of our onetime enemy." I would change the last of Shannon's statement to BECAUSE it is displayed in the setting of our onetime enemy. I saw this film shortly after it was released, in a theater on a USArmy post in Munich, Germany (McGraw Kaserne). At that time I was a student, especially of German history. This film provided an opportunity to be transported, for a few hours, into that closed society that our German friends had lived through but could not adequately convey to us. For those who enjoyed this film I would recommend reading "The Officer Factory" by Hans Helmut Kirst and Betrayed Skies (I have forgotten the author, but that is a first rate but largely unknown German pilot's story of his unwilling part in the air war). In short, this is a modern day All Quiet on the Western Front.

Yes a time to praise Douglas Sirk,this magnificent director,too often forgotten!This movie is arguably his masterpiece.He used to work in Germany before making a career in the USA,and this war that tore apart his adoptive homeland would necessarily urge him to express his pacifism.So,he adapted Erich Maria Remarque ,whose books were burned by the Nazis and who plays a part in the movie. Some people said the title was melodramatic and dumb.On the contrary,it indicates that Ernst's and Elisabeth's happiness will be short-lived,so every moment is to be treasured,and we know their love will never know a humdrum mediocrity. Sirk's camera circles round calcined beams,ruined houses,nightmare landscapes.A sublime shot shows a hearse that stands still in a desert street ,while inhabitants take refuge in the shelters. A subplot is downright fascinating;Ernst meets up with an old friend again:this friend is rather dumb ,good to nothing,but he lives in a luxury flat,having taken advantage of the nazi rising.Later,Louis Malle will focus his whole film on such a character in "Lacombe Lucien". Compare the buddy's attitude with that of Elisabeth when Ernst wants to give her some food.She refuses so proudly he's forced to give it to a whore. Back to the front,Ernst will meet death in a very absurd way:understanding -like Elisabeth before him- the atrocity and the stupidity of the war he's waging,he tries to help Russian partisans and his fate is sealed.He tries ,in a last gesture ,to catch his wife's letter that the current sweeps along.Superb.(compare with the ending of Remarque's "all quiet on the western front" made by Lewis Milestone)NB.Sirk's son was probably killed in Russia and the final scenes might tell what had happened to him;Sirk's first wife forced his boy to join the Nazi,partly out of revenge cause Detlef Sierck 's second wife was a Jew.