IMDb RATING
7.6/10
3.7K
YOUR RATING
On the Russian front in 1944, German private Ernst Graeber receives a leave and visits his family in Germany but Germany isn't the same country he left behind.On the Russian front in 1944, German private Ernst Graeber receives a leave and visits his family in Germany but Germany isn't the same country he left behind.On the Russian front in 1944, German private Ernst Graeber receives a leave and visits his family in Germany but Germany isn't the same country he left behind.
- Nominated for 1 Oscar
- 1 win & 3 nominations total
Liselotte Pulver
- Elizabeth Kruse
- (as Lilo Pulver)
John van Dreelen
- Political Officer
- (as John Van Dreelen)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe film was banned in Israel and the Soviet Union because of its uncommon compassionate portrayal of Germans during WWII.
- GoofsKeenan Wynn uses pounds instead of kilos to describe Don DeFore's wife's weight. Later Don DeFore also uses pounds instead of kilos when he mentions his wife having lost weight since he last saw her.
- Quotes
Ernst Graeber: You're more lovely every time I see you. Only this time, you look like the next time.
- Crazy creditsActor Karl Ludwig Lindt is credited in opening credits but not in the closing credits.
- ConnectionsEdited into Raid on Rommel (1971)
- SoundtracksA TIME TO LOVE
(uncredited)
Music by Miklós Rózsa
Lyrics by Charles Henderson
Performed by uncredited blonde in cabaret scene
Featured review
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.
helpful•1910
- jandesimpson
- Jul 28, 2002
Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Languages
- Also known as
- There's a Time to Love
- Filming locations
- Hopfenohe, Grafenwöhr, Bavaria, Germany(Russian village in ruins)
- Production company
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross worldwide
- $31,523
- Runtime2 hours 12 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 2.35 : 1
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By what name was A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958) officially released in India in English?
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