A Time to Love and a Time To Die [Masters of Cinema edition, UK import, Region 2 PAL format]

A Time to Love and a Time To Die [Masters of Cinema edition, UK import, Region 2 PAL format] Review

"Their pounding hearts drowned out the sound of chaos thundering around them." Douglas Sirk turns back to his native Germany at the time of WWII. A CinemaScope production staged on a grand scale, Sirk's picture pulsates with an intimacy that has known longing for too long, and seethes with the repression of emotions poised to explode like bombs. John Gavin plays Ernst Gräber, a soldier on the Russian-German Front in 1944 venturing home to his shattered home to search for fragments of his family's shattered lives. Amid the shards, he falls in love with Elisabeth (Liselotte Pulver), the charming daughter of his parents' doctor, activating a magnetism that compels them to love, even as it hurtles them into epochal death. Adapted from the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, Sirk's film takes its literary source and sculpts it anew out of colour, decor, and performance, arguably besting the novel on all aesthetic levels. ****SPECIAL TWO-DISC Edition including: --Gorgeous new anamorphic transfer of the film in its original 2:35:1 aspect ratio --English SDH subtitles for the hearing impaired --OF TEARS AND SPEED, a 12-minute, visually annotated recitation of Jean-Luc Godard's seminal essay on Sirk's film; interview with Wesley Strick, author of 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 [MIRAGE OF LIFE]: A PORTRAIT OF DOUGLAS SIRK a 49-minute film portrait from 1984 of Sirk and his wife Hilda in conversation, and reflecting, from their apartment in Germany, back upon their lives in Hollywood; 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 and more.