It is not a remake of Lewis Milestone's 1930 classic, but a new film adaption of the novel. It becomes clear, e.g. because in the first film adaptation the plot is told in the chronologically correct order, but in this version - as in the novel - Paul Bäumer remembers retrospectively events before the war effort. The end of the film is also different: In contrast to the first filming, in which Bäumer is shot in the end by a sniper, as he tries to reach for a butterfly on the parapet, this version ends with the fact that Bäumer paints a bird in the ditch, who is sitting near him on a tree, and only shot when he then moves out of cover.

Although this filmed in Czechoslovakia movie keeps closer to the original book and was also produced with more modern technical means and in color, he also received good overall reviews and was awarded a Golden Globe in 1980 as the best film production for television, the remake did not reach the popularity and popularity of Lewis Milestone's first adaption of 1930, not least because he was - at another time - politically hardly controversial. The »Lexicon of the international film« judged that the film does not reach the intensity of the first film adaptation of the novel. »Because of its honest realism [he] was [still] an impressive anti-war movie.«

The DVD includes both the TV Version (122 min.) and the Director's Cut (155 min.). The German version of the Director's Cut contains some scenes in English with German subtitles. These are scenes that were not intended for the original TV version.