A Time to Love and a Time to Die

A Time to Love and a Time to Die follows Ernst Graeber, a young German soldier fighting on the Eastern Front during the Second World War, who receives an unexpected leave and returns to his home town. He finds it badly damaged by Allied bombing and his family gone. While searching for his parents, he meets Elizabeth Kruse, the daughter of a local doctor who has been taken to a concentration camp. The two draw close amid the ruins, but Ernst's leave ends and he must return to the front.

The film was directed by Douglas Sirk, released in 1958 between Written on the Wind and Imitation of Life, and written by Orin Jannings from Erich Maria Remarque's novel. Remarque appears in the credited cast as Professor Pohlmann. John Gavin plays Ernst and Liselotte Pulver plays Elizabeth, with Jock Mahoney, Don DeFore and Keenan Wynn among the twenty-five credited performers. It was produced by Robert Arthur for Universal and runs 132 minutes.

On IMDb the film holds a rating of 7.6 from around 4,000 votes, and on TMDB it has a 7.2 from roughly 100 votes. Both audience scores point to a film that has retained a favorable reputation among viewers over the decades, though the larger IMDb sample carries more weight than the smaller TMDB figure.