"A Time to Love and A Time to Die" Review

 

by Daniel White

With a Chilean father and a Mexican mama, John Gavin (Juan Apablasa), a Universal-International contract player, was being groomed by the studio to be the next Rock Hudson (and they say grooming is a bad thing!). Douglas Sirk's A Time to Love and A Time to Die (1958) was supposed to have been the actor's ticket to mega stardom, but it didn't pan out that way. The movie was not the hit the studio anticipated and Gavin never became the next big heartthrob. Who knows why it didn't catch on with audiences, for A Time to Love and A Time to Die is a well-made film. The story of a German soldier on leave during WWll, perhaps people weren't ready yet for a sympathetic tale of German civilians during wartime.

Set in the spring of 1944, Gavin plays Ernst Graeber, a weary soldier on the Russian front. Grateful for his furlough after two years of non-stop fighting and disturbed by the brutality he's witnessed, Ernst returns to the (nameless) German city he hailed from. Unable to locate his parents, he discovers the homeland he left behind has not escaped the horrors of war. His only solace: a burgeoning romance with a young woman (the engaging Lilo Pulver).

Sirk has pulled out all the stops with a lush musical score (Miklos Rozsa) and sumptuous cinematography (Russell Metty). A pair of star-crossed lovers, some hiss-worthy Nazis, and the constant threat of death from aerial bombardment, what's not to like? He's even rustled up a decent cameo from the guy who wrote the book the movie is based on (Erich Maria Remarque). The movie-fish public just wasn't biting.

Could John Gavin HAVE been the reason? The fledgling actor is seriously lacking in charisma. A matinee idol without mojo, Gavin's career often consisted in supporting older, established leading ladies who possessed enough star power for the two of them. Resentful of the comparisons between him and Hudson, John Gavin was missing the one ingredient Rock had in abundance: magnetism.

With Hazel's Don DeFore, Keenan Wynn and Klaus Kinski as a Gestapo agent, A Time to Love and A Time to Die is currently available on YouTube.