Audience-Alienating Premise: Probably why the film failed at the box office. A long talky film about politics with no big stars isn't exactly the stuff of broad audience appeal. Darryl F. Zanuck was aware of this problem and decided that they would compensate by filling the movie with lavish spectacle. The thinking was that this would attract the mases, but instead, it just made the film more expensive and thus less likely to earn a profit.
