Complete agree with you on all your choices. Have you ever seen Paths of Glory by Stanley Kubrick? During the 1950s he managed to make a lot of ;small' studio movies and frankly considering how truly dark this films is, I'm amazed the studio let him make it all. Kirk Douglas must've used a lot of clout.

There's a reason almost no WWI movies are made. It's really amazing to see this film and then realize this is the sameman who would make Full Metal Jacket thirty years later. I kind ofget the feeling most of the audience wasn't prepared for either film.

Roger Ebert, who pretty much every film Kubrick ever made (he even rhapsodized about Barry Lyndon which may be the greatest eyesore in Kubrick's career) thought that this film may have had the most haunting ending he's ever seen. Truffaut once said no one could ever make an anti-war film because every film somehow celebrates the glory of war, and he's almost entirely correct. Even the greatest directors -Spielberg and Malick among them - can't quite get there and for all that 1917 did, it was too technical rather than personal. Truffaut never saw this film - literally. It was banned in France until after he died. It might have changed his mind