Sure, it's got DV and DA but so did the 'free' Netflix version, and even if they're noticeably better, you'd have to not only really love the film (which, clearly, many do) but also be prepared to watch it more than once (which, even those who really appreciate it may not be up for). Considered a realistic and harrowing account of warfare in World War I, it made the American Film Institute's first 100 Years.

That doesn't mean that decent new war movies can't be made - from Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan to Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down to Malick's The Thin Red Line - right up until Nolan's Dunkirk and Mendes' 1917, the latter of which bringing us full circle to what is essentially the flip side of that coin, All Quiet: a tale of a young German soldier whose illusions become disillusions overnight as he turns from idealistic patriot into I-just-want-to-survive in a heartbeat. This same version, running 102 minutes, was re-released very successfully by Realart Pictures in 1950, and Universal-International brought it back to theaters in 1958. A great number of German Army veterans were living in Los Angeles at the time of filming and were recruited as bit players and technical advisers. The latter format additionally contains a 133-minute restoration of the international sound version, albeit mislabelled as the "silent version".

During and after its German premiere in Berlin on December 4, 1930, Nazi brownshirts under the command of Joseph Goebbels disrupted the viewings by setting off stink bombs, throwing sneezing powder in the air and releasing white mice in the theaters, eventually escalating to attacking audience members perceived to be Jewish and forcing projectors to shut down. Eventually, they are sent back to the field kitchens to get their rations; each man receives double helpings, simply because of the number of dead. Later re-releases were substantially cut and the film's ending scored with new music against the wishes of director Lewis Milestone. The final sequence shows the 2nd Company arriving at the front for the first time, fading out to the image of a cemetery.

Two decades later, Milestone's wishes were finally granted when the United States Library of Congress undertook an exhaustive restoration of the film in 2006. Watching people slowly stab one another to death, then feel inherent remorse over what they've had to do, as shells blow craters in the land, oblivious to whether or not anybody might have been standing on it, mounted guns shred troops, and tanks roll around to finish the job. In an attack on a cemetery, Paul stabs a French soldier and is distraught as he spends the night trapped in a hole with the dying man. It was quite revolutionary, depicting the horrific reality of war rather than the glamourous, sanitised version. But post-'Nam, for sure, war movies have seldom been blindly patriotic, and for the last half-century-plus, there have been some pretty gritty, punishing lessons in why war is bad.

You would possibly think it was fairly obvious up front, but, suffice to say, for anyone on the fence, the last 50 years have made it pretty damn clear. The recruits' first trip to the trenches with the veterans is a harrowing experience, during which Behn is killed.