Nowak LO (2026)
Publication Type: Journal article
Publication year: 2026
DOI: 10.1080/14788810.2026.2651623
This essay looks at Douglas Sirk’s film A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958), an adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben (1954), in which the intermedial translation from literature to film comes along with an intercultural connection between the USA and the German-speaking part of Europe in terms of diegesis, biography, reception history, and production history. On the level of production, Sirk and Remarque’s different contributions to the making of the film are examined in light of the various concepts of cinematic authorship. While Sirk hybridized the genres of war film and melodrama, which he also employed in the rest of his oeuvre, Remarque not only wrote the underlying novel, but also contributed to the script and even played an important supporting role himself–a very rare occurrence in the history of cinematic adaptations of literary works.
APA:
Nowak, L.-O. (2026). Distributed authorship: Erich Maria Remarque’s novel Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben and Douglas Sirk’s film adaptation A Time to Love and a Time to Die. Atlantic studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/14788810.2026.2651623
MLA:
Nowak, Lars-Oliver. "Distributed authorship: Erich Maria Remarque’s novel Zeit zu leben und Zeit zu sterben and Douglas Sirk’s film adaptation A Time to Love and a Time to Die." Atlantic studies (2026).
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