The Melbourne Cinémathèque & ACMI present
A Time to Love and a Time to Die
When
Wed 31 Aug 2022
This heartbreaking adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s anti-war novel is Sirk’s most personal film. Dedicated to the memory of the son Sirk left in Germany, it traces the life of a young soldier (John Gavin) sent to the Russian Front and forced to commit atrocities before meeting a girl while on leave. A sense of encroaching death and ruination grants poignancy to the film’s ill-fated love story and detailed portrait of everyday life in Germany during the war. Beautifully shot in ’scope by key Sirk collaborator Russell Metty, it features Remarque and Klaus Kinski in supporting roles.
Also screening on Wed 31 August
Program
"Life's parade at your fingertips": Douglas Sirk
All I Desire (1953) – Wed 24 Aug, 7pm
Imitation of Life (1959) – Wed 24 Aug, 8.45pm
All That Heaven Allows (1955) – Wed 31 Aug, 7pm
A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958) – Wed 31 Aug, 8.40pm
Shockproof (1949) – Wed 7 Sept, 6.30pm
April, April! (1935) – Wed 7 Sept, 8pm
Boefje (1939) – Wed 7 Sept, 9.35pm
About the program
Best known as the director of a string of lavish Hollywood melodramas made for Universal Pictures in the 1950s, Douglas Sirk’s (1897–1987) feature-film career spanned almost 40 films between 1935 and 1959. He was a successful theatre director in Weimar Germany prior to transferring his passion and critical eye to the silver screen, moving from Nazi Germany to the United States in the late 1930s.
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About Melbourne Cinémathèque
Australia's longest-running film society, Melbourne Cinémathèque screens significant works of international cinema in the medium they were created, the way they would have originally screened.
Melbourne Cinémathèque is self-administered, volunteer-run, not-for-profit and membership-driven.
