And they don't watch them for the writing, which is melodramatic and clunky in both.
People watch Roman Holiday because it stars Audrey Hepburn in her prime.
People watch Spartacus because it is the first film where they gave Kubrick a budget - the script is besides the point: it's the visuals.
‘Gun Crazy’ and ‘Lonely Are the Brave’ have huge followings among film buffs. The former is highly influential.
We’ll have to agree to disagree, on the value of the script/dialogue in Roman Holiday and Spartacus, and on the movies that are still watched today, including:
Five Came Back
Kitty Foyle
A Guy Named Joe
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
Our Vines Have Tender Grapes
Gun Crazy
Exodus
Lonely Are The Brave
Papillon
(Some original screenplays, some adapated)
The pro-Israel position is another the Left adopted for a short time and then changed its mind on. The only difference being in the United States even the Hard Left continued to support Israel long after the International Left had abandoned it.
The visuals had a problem, too (omitting for the moment Trumbo's hatchet job on the person and life of Marcus Licinius Crassus).
There was a broadly-applied anachronism in the arms and equipment of the Roman soldiery, which was from the Trajanic period 175 years later.
Roman soldiers of the first century B.C. wore simple Montefortino helmets (whose Roman name was conus, so you get the idea) and chain-mail, thigh-length hauberks, not the laminated plate armor seen in the film. The shield form was also wrong, and the swords used in Caesar's and Pompey's time was not yet the straight-edged, simplified form called "Pompeiian" (one was found there).
Just gratuitously complaining about the details; but the larger complaint I've read and am unable to criticize is that the real story of the Servile War, the revolt's actual name, is contaminated by "Spartakist" German Communist pseudo-historical "lore" which advances the Marxist-Leninist historical narrative.