Film Library
Genre Publisher Director Actor

Free UK postage
Friendly returns policy
Pre-release price promise
100% secure website
Save money with our Bonus Points
One of The Indy's Top 50 e-boutiques

Payment Methods

A Time to Love and a Time to Die (Masters of Cinema) DVD, 1958

£11.99

RRP: £19.99
You save £8 (40%)

Availability
In Stock - should be despatched within 72 hours. Despatched from Guernsey. Delivery timesTakes 2-3 days to reach UK customers. European customers should expect 5 days and International customers around two weeks.

Delivery
Free to UK customers!
Costs to other countriesWestern Europe: £2.50
Rest of the world: £3.75

Returns Policy
If you are unhappy with your purchase, you can return it to us within 14 days. More details

MovieMail's Review

It’s 1944; the Eastern Front is collapsing fast. German soldier Ernst Graeber is finally granted leave, a chance to see home and family again. But bombs have done a thorough job on everything he knew and he can find no trace of his parents. Amidst the horror, he falls in love, but his war is far from over...

Adapted from a novel by EM Remarque (who also wrote All Quiet on the Western Front), this is perhaps the bravest and most beautiful of war films. There are many movies that remind us War Is Hell but few with the courage to humanise the losing side. Sirk was always a more restrained director than his reputation as master of melodrama suggests; here he eschews easy sentiment and emotional bombast and his film is all the more heartbreaking for it. He does more than show the horror of war; he evokes its anguish.

MovieMail on 2nd March 2009
View all 91 of MovieMail's reviews

A Time to Love and a Time to Die (Masters of Cinema)

Film Information

Director - Douglas Sirk

Produced - 1958

Main Language - English

Countries & Regions - American film

Cast - John Gavin, Keenan Wynn, Liselotte Pulver

DVD Details

Certificate:	PG	Publisher:	Eureka / Masters of Cinema	Region:	2
Length:	127 mins	Aspect:	2.35:1	Cat No:	EKA40271
Format:	DVD Colour	Subtitles:	English HoH

DVD Extras

Gorgeous new anamorphic transfer of the film in its original 2:35:1 CinemaScope aspect ratio
Of Tears and Speed: According to Jean-Luc Godard (a 12-minute, visually annotated recitation of Jean-Luc Godard's seminal essay on Sirk's film)
Video interview with Wesley Strick, screenwriter of Scorsese's Cape Fear and author of the novel Out There in the Dark, a roman-à-clef based upon Sirk's life in Hollywood and his relationship with the estranged son who took a starring role in Hitler Youth propaganda
Imitation of Life: A Portrait of Douglas Sirk (a 49-minute film portrait from 1984, directed by Daniel Schmid and photographed by Renato Berta, of Douglas Sirk and his wife Hilda in conversation, and reflecting, from their apartment in Germany, back upon their lives in Hollywood)
The original trailer for the film, from the time it retained the provisional title of simply 'A Time to Love'
36-page booklet containing the complete text of Jean-Luc Godard's essay on the film, writings from critic Tag Gallagher on the film and Sirk's career in general, and an assemblage of notes that includes excerpts from Sirk's reflections upon the film, remarks upon visual motifs inside the movie, the CinemaScope process used to photograph the picture, and more.

Film Description

Based on Erich Maria Remarque’s novel A Time to Love and a Time to Die, Douglas Sirk’s A Time to Love and a Time to Die is set in the devastating ruin of burnt-out Germany during the final days of World War Two. Amid this tumult and desolation is Private Ernst Graeber (John Gavin) who, having been sent home on leave from the Russian front, finds his town destroyed by Allied bombing. Frantically searching for his parents, Ernst encounters his childhood friend Elizabeth Kruse (Lilo Pulver), the daughter of a doctor who has been removed to a concentration camp. In spite of the horror of their surroundings and their close proximity to death, Ernst and Elizabeth find hope in their love for one another. Together they try to wrest sanity from a world shattered by fear and hatred. Featuring a cameo appearance by the novel’s author, Sirk’s penultimate film brought him to the attention of critics and theorists worldwide.

Related Genres

Film Stills

View all 8 film stills in full size

Customers who liked this also liked...

1954, Robert Hamer, DVD

£5.99

RRP: £9.99
Save £4

Father Brown

Alec Guinness takes the role of the priest detective in this deft and witty adaptation of GK Ches...

More Details

2008, Terence Davies, DVD

£9.99

RRP: £19.99
Save £10

Of Time and the City

For Of Time and the City, Terence Davies returned to his native Liverpool and to his filmmaking r...

More Details

1952, Otto Preminger, DVD

£8.99

RRP: £9.99
Save £1

Angel Face

"She loved one man ... enough to KILL to get him!" A classic Otto Preminger thriller from 1952...

More Details

Customer Reviews

Share your thoughts - write a review

Barry Forshaw on 12th March 2009

One of the most acclaimed of Hollywood directors, Douglas Sirk abandoned his signature field of 'womens' pictures' melodrama to return to his native Germany for this r... more >