Douglas Sirk ‑ the master of the Hollywood melodrama ‑ turns back to his native Germany at the time of the Second World War for the film that would stand as his penultimate American feature: A Time to Love and a Time to Die. A CinemaScope production staged on a grand scale, Sirk's picture nevertheless pulsates with an intimacy that has known longing for too long, and seethes with the repression of emotions poised to explode like bombs.

John Gavin plays Ernst Gräber, a soldier on the Russian‑German Front in 1944 venturing home to Hamburg on a rare furlough. Upon arrival, he discovers a city that bears little resemblance to the one he left behind ‑ and so, through the rubble of the air‑raids, he searches desperately for fragments of his family's shattered lives. But amid the shards, he falls in love with Elisabeth (Liselotte Pulver), the charming daughter of his parents' doctor, and thus activates a magnetism that compels both individuals toward one another in love, even as it hurtles them headlong into epochal death.

Adapted from the novel by Erich Maria Remarque (the author of All Quiet on the Western Front, who also makes a cameo appearance in Sirk's picture), A Time to Love and a Time to Die takes its literary source and sculpts it anew out of matter made from colour, decor, and performance ‑ and arguably bests the novel on all aesthetic levels. And yet perhaps nothing can better summarise the power of Sirk's film ‑ or of his entire body of work ‑ than these words from the movie's trailer: "Their pounding hearts drowned out the sound of chaos thundering around them."

A Time to Love and a Time to Die was originally slated for a November release by Eureka Entertainment and will be released for the first time on UK DVD under the The Masters of Cinema banner as a 2-disc Special Edition at the RRP of£19.99, featuring a new anamorphic transfer of the film in its original 2:35:1 CinemaScope aspect ratio with English SDH subtitles for the hearing impaired, and the following extra features:

• Of Tears and Speed... According to Jean-Luc Godard – a 12‑minute, visually annotated recitation of Jean‑Luc Godard's seminal essay on Sirk's film;
• 19‑minute video interview with Wesley Strick, screenwriter of Scorsese's Cape Fear and author of the novel Out There in the Dark, a roman‑a‑clef based upon Sirk's life in Hollywood and his relationship with the estranged son who took a starring role in Hitler Youth propaganda;
• Imitation of Life [Mirage of Life]: A Portrait of Douglas Sirk: a 49‑minute film portrait from 1984, directed by Daniel Schmid and photographed by Renato Berta, of Douglas Sirk and his wife Hilda in conversation, and reflecting, from their apartment in Germany, back upon their lives in Hollywood;
• The original trailer for the film, from the time it retained the provisional title of simply "A Time to Love"
• 36‑page booklet containing the complete text of Jean‑Luc Godard's essay on the film, writings from critic Tag Gallagher on the film and Sirk's career in general, and an assemblage of notes that includes excerpts from Sirks reflections upon the film, remarks upon visual motifs inside the movie, the CinemaScope process used to photograph the picture, and more.