A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958) Masters Of Cinema Blu-Ray Review

Rating:
PG
BD Release Date:
23rd September 2013 (UK)
Distributor:
Eureka Video
Director:
Douglas Sirk
Cast:
John Gavin, Liselotte Pulver, Jock Mahoney
Buy:
A Time To Love And A Time To Die (Masters of Cinema) (Blu-ray)
A Time to Love and a Time to Die was previously released by Masters of Cinema on dvd but it’s a welcome blu-ray upgrade. That master of melodrama Douglas Sirk directs it and as far as I know Masters of Cinema are the only company to have released any of his films on blu-ray. The other film they released is The Tarnished Angels and both films give 2 different sides to Sirk. A Time to Love… is firstly in colour and his colour films have a very expressionistic use of colour. The Tarnished Angels on the other hand is black and white and is to an extent an even more pessimistic film, which is the norm with his black and white films.

A Time to Love… is firstly a surprising sympathetic film about a Nazi officer. The thing, which is most surprising, is Sirk who of course is German and Jewish himself and who also fled in the 1930s became of his political leanings and ethnicity would make such a sympathetic film about a Nazi officer. The film however is about an apolitical soldier who was literally just a hired hand, which was often the case at the time.

The film is a classic piece of Sirkian melodrama; the plot is basically the Nazi soldier who is stationed out on the Eastern Front finally gets his first furlough in 2 years. He arrives home and Allied bombing has destroyed his hometown and his parents are missing. He meets a girl who is the daughter of his family’s doctor but the Gestapo is holding him. They two of them fall in love and marry but in typical Sirkian style everything ends in tragedy.

The film was made near the end of his career in Hollywood he would later move back to his Native Germany to teach films. His last film was a collaborative short film with his greatest admirer Rainer Werner Fassbinder (who wrote extensively on Sirk and was one of the 1st to revaluate his films). It was the last film he made before his much-revered Imitation of Life (recently voted one of the 100 best films ever made in the Sight and Sound poll). It’s one of the first post-war films I can think of that doesn’t paint all Nazis are evil bastards which is why it’s so fascinating.

John Gavin stars as the Nazi soldier and in many ways he is Rock Hudson’s replacement (who Sirk cast in the majority of his key films). He is a handsome black haired masculine actor very much in the build of Hudson and was groomed to be like him by Universal Studios so the similarity obviously appealed to Sirk who also casted him in Imitation of Life. However interestingly is actually of Latin descent and not gay. Hudson’s closeted homosexuality always brought interested subtext to many of his roles especially his work with Sirk and Seconds. John Gavin would later star in Spartacus, Psycho and was even cast as James Bond before Roger Moore. The film also features a absurdly young Klaus Kinski in a small role.

The film is very typical of Sirk with its lush CinemaScope photography and Sirk’s films were certainly made for that format. It also has that characteristic irony that runs though all his work especially with the film’s ending. It’s not his greatest film but it’s a fascinating one.

★★★★☆

Ian Schultz

The Tarnished Angels Masters Of Cinema Blu-Ray Review

Rating: 12
BD Release Date:
26th August 2013 (UK)
Director:
Douglas Sirk
Cast:
Rock Hudson, Dorothy Malone, Robert Stack
Buy:
(Masters of Cinema) (Blu-ray)
The Tarnished Angels is a film based on the novel Pylon by noted American writer William Faulker; who in fact wrote quite a few screenplays. Faulkner considered it the only good adaptation of his work he saw in his lifetime. Legendary director Douglas Sirk noted for his Technicolor drenched melodramas and the films normally starring Rock Hudson directed it.

The Tarnished Angels is about the very strange relationship between Roger Shumann (Robert Stack), his wife LaVerne (Dorothy Malone), Roger’s mechanic Jiggs (Jack Carson) and local reporter Burke Devlin (Rock Hudson). Roger is a disillusioned World War I flying ace that is making appearances as a stunt pilot, which also features his parachuting wife. They also have a kid Jack but it’s never clear that if Roger or Jiggs is the father on of the kid. The gypsy like lifestyle of the Roger, LaVerne and Jiggs intrigues Burke Devlin. He wants to do a newspaper piece on it much to the dismay to his editor.

Burke is dismayed by the treatment of his family and especially his wife LaVerne. He gets increasingly more and more attracted to his neglected wife. The key line is when Burke compares Roger, Jiggs and LaVerne as extra-terrestrials to his editor. They are very alien like and can’t form any meaningful relationship even with the ones they love. The film will end in tragedy in a way only true melodrama can.

The film is a slight departure from Sirk’s normally work due to the very contrasty black and white, which Sirk choose to shoot in to the echo the depression era the film is set. It is also perhaps his most bleak and pessimistic film. The film has the characteristic irony that goes though all of Sirk’s finest films. The Pylon, which Faulkner’s novel took its name and the pilots fly around is very overt symbolism of the characters going nowhere. It is brilliantly crosscut with the son Jack flying in circle during a tragic plane clash.

Rock Hudson gives a great performance, as the journo who falls deeply for LeVerne but knows nothing will happen. Rock is always one of the constantly surprising actors of the golden age of Hollywood for proof see Seconds and Giant. The film is also shoot in glorious black and white CinemaScope.

The Tarnished Angels also came out not that soon off one of his most successful films Written on the Wind that shared the same leads with the exception of Lauren Bacall. The film originally was one of his least successful films. The resurgence of his work since the 1970s with directors such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, John Waters, Todd Haynes and even Quentin Tarantino praising his brand of melodrama. The film has since being re-evaluated as one of his key works.

★★★★☆

Ian Schultz