Review of A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958) by Mark B — 15 Mar 2013

Take the aesthetics of tear-jerking movies like Imitation of Life or Magnificent Obsession, set them on the Russian Front and in Germany in 1944, and you get some idea of this film. A melange of melodrama, camp, death, and a short appearance by Klaus Kinski as a heartless Gestapo clerk, ATTLAATOD is actually a pretty good film.

Especially weird is to see those loveable mugs, the Wehrmacht , dealing with Russian partisans. The truly fun part of the film happens when Ernst Graeber goes home on leave and makes time with good girl Elizabeth Kruse.

Every time they go on a date, the USAAF bombs the shit out of them. And of course there are the symbolic characters like Joseph, the hiding hateless Jew, and the Heine, the infantile piano prodigy who happens to burn people alive at his own concentration camp.

Still, though, I liked this movie a lot. Nothing else liked appeared in American films until Peckinpaugh's Cross of Iron in 1977. Whatever else you want to say about Sirk, he used the widescreen to great effect,.