Sarris concedes that despite its artistic failings, the film does hold a mandate around the world as the "single most beloved entertainment ever produced". Judith Crist observes that, kitsch aside, the film is "undoubtedly still the best and most durable piece of popular entertainment to have come off the Hollywood assembly lines", the product of a showman with "taste and intelligence". Schlesinger notes that the first half of the film does have a "sweep and vigor" that aspire to its epic theme, but—finding agreement with the film's contemporary criticisms—the personal lives take over in the second half, and it ends up losing its theme in unconvincing sentimentality. Kauffmann also finds interesting parallels with "The Godfather", which had just replaced "Gone with the Wind" as the highest-grosser at the time: both were produced from "ultra-American" best-selling novels, both live within codes of honor that are romanticized, and both in essence offer cultural fabrication or revisionism.