A Time To Love And A Time To Die

This was a movie I’d seen part of on cable years ago, but it’s not on Netflix, so I had to buy the DVD itself – fortunately it wasn’t particularly expensive.  It’s based on a novel by Erich-Maria Remarque, better known as the author of All Quiet on the Western Front.  He actually appears in the film as Professor Pohlmann.

The story takes place in 1944 during World War II.  A young German soldier, Ernst Graeber (John Gavin), finally gets his 3 week furlough approved – he hasn’t been home for two years.  But when he arrives at his home town, he finds half of it obliterated, including his own family home.  His parents are missing, but he eventually gets word that they’re alive but relocated somewhere else.  Presumably, due to the chaos of the war – and the very likely invasion of the Red Army into Germany [one soldier jokes that the way the war is going, they’re likely to be in Germany without needing a furlough] – a reunion will have to wait until the war is over…if ever.

Meanwhile he meets Elizabeth Kruse (Lilo Pulver), the daughter of local Dr. Kruse.  The doctor himself has been sent to a concentration camp; his fate is unknown.  After some initial mutual antipathy (“love at first hate” yet again) they fall in love and get married.  As a soldier’s wife she gets 200 RM a month and a death benefit if he’s killed.  But they honestly love each other.  Why not?  He’s a tall, handsome guy and she’s pretty cute.  They’re actually romantically compatible after all.

There is no shortage of intriguing characters:  Sgt. Boettcher, who’s also on leave trying to find his 200 lb. “Helga” of a wife, Alma; Ernst’s school chum Oscar Binding, the local party chief, who was a dropout loser in school – he even got their beloved Professor Pohlmann sent to the camps (briefly, just to teach him a lesson); eccentric Corporal Reuter, who lends Ernst his stunning corporal’s uniform (made by a general’s tailor) and sends him off to the one surviving four star restaurant in town, Germania, for a date with Elizabeth; Professor Pohlmann himself; and even a cynical, brutal SS officer who brags of murdering Jews stacked up in a “layer cake”.  Klaus Kinski is in here, as a Gestapo officer who gives Ernst a package for Elizabeth.

Aside from the SS officer, and to a lesser extent Binding (who simply seems eager to brag to Ernst about his connections and benefits, the closest thing to a Peter Keating this story has) most of the Germans come off as fairly sympathetic.  There’s even a barber early in the film who gives Ernst a shave:  my Uncle Jeff, a non-actor in a movie role that even gives him a few lines.  It was worth seeing the film just to see his screen time, as modest as it was.  R.I.P., Uncle Jeff.