A love story centered on the lives of three young German soldiers in the years following World War I. Their close friendship is strengthened by their shared love for the same woman who is dying of tuberculosis.
Acting
Sullavan's fragile luminosity outshines the MGM polish.
Direction
Borzage's romantic fatalism at peak melodramatic power.
Director
Frank Borzage
Robert Taylor
Erich Lohkamp
Margaret Sullavan
Patricia Hollmann
Franchot Tone
Otto Koster
Robert Young
Gottfried Lenz
Guy Kibbee
Alfons
Lionel Atwill
Breuer
Henry Hull
Dr. Becker
Charley Grapewin
Local Doctor
Monty Woolley
Dr. Jaffe
Stanley Andrews
Officer giving toast (uncredited)
Jessie Arnold
Nurse at sanatorium (uncredited)
George Chandler
First comic with singer (uncredited)
Marjorie Main
Old woman by phone (uncredited)
Francis X. Bushman Jr.
Second comic (uncredited)
Spencer Charters
Herr Schultz
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
F. Scott Fitzgerald worked on the screenplay but received no credit due to MGM politics.
Borzage's German soldiers are impossibly noble for 1938 — Hollywood's preemptive elegy for a world about to burn again.
US
