Product Details

• Format: NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Specialty Video Comp
• VHS Release Date: August 23, 1989
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301987780
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #166,206 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Time to Love and a Time to Die is Gavin's best work, May 3, 2002

By 

Oran R. Woody (Spring, Texas United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Time to Love and A Time to Die [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Set during World War II and shown from the perspective of the common German soldier, this film may be one of the best ever at showing the true nature of war. Although Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front" is far better known and more widely read, "A Time to Love and a Time to Die" has a less overt anti-war message, but provides a real insight into the tragic cost of national conflict.
John Gavin plays an infantryman on the Russian front that has to walk a fine line between his military's policy and his feelings of humanity.
When he returns to war-torn Berlin on leave, he finds that his childhood home has been destroyed and that his family is missing. During his search for any information on his missing family, he meets the daughter of one of his school teachers from before the war. The resulting relationship constitutes most of the focus of the film. They fall in love and marry before he returns to the front.
The film has a tragic ending that emphasizes the finality of war and its ultimate inequality. Goodness provides no protection to its victims and yet life may continue on and on.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The other half of All Quiet on the Western Front, June 18, 2006

By 

Barry Mccall "Video Grand Vizer!" (Chicago, Il.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Time to Love and A Time to Die [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Erich Marie Remarqe wrote All Quiet on the Western Front, and

A Time to Love and A Time to Die almost 30 years apart.

Yet these two stories and the films made from them, seem to speak to one another. Its as if the young soilder Paul is speaking to his counterpart, the mature soilder Ernest, across

a gulf of time. that spans two world wars.

These are two very moving and sad films. Statements on how ugly

and utterly useless war is.

I hope that this haunting film will on day be available on dvd.

Perhaps paired with All Quiet on The Western Front.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A forgotten gem!, July 30, 2005

By 

Hiram Gomez Pardo (Valencia, Venezuela) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Time to Love and A Time to Die [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This film may be considered one of the last artistic statements of a filmmaker was perhaps to have born out of time. His artistic path is characterized by a deep concern about the human nature. In this sense, his style is intimately linked with Max Ophlus; he seems to be closer to European audiences instead the American ones. He influenced remarkably to Rainer Werner Fassbinder.

A hard relationship in a couple as direct consequence of the war wounds, a letter that will make turn back the memory key, the vanished livings in a devastated town. It's so difficult at first glance to be engaged unless you are placed from the another side of the world. Thousand of altered destinies, of forced twists of fate, of what it could have been and it wasn't.

A shadowed film, loaded with dark poetry, not easy going but immensely rewarding at the end of the road.

Based on Erich Maria Remarque's play, including a curious intervention of the same novelist in the film.