The Fountainhead
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Movie Reviews of The Fountainhead
Movie Review: A great movie!
Summary: 5 Stars
The movie is not as great as the novel, but almost! You should buy it!Movie Review: Wildly Excessive Melodrama Captures Ayn Rand's Diatribe Against Collectivism at a Feverish Pitch
Summary: 4 Stars
There is no getting around the fact that this 1949 movie is great fun, and a pristine print is finally available on DVD from Warner Home Video. It should come as no surprise that the film is so faithful to Ayn Rand's eminently readable, marathon 1943 novel since Rand wrote the screenplay herself and in true individualistic fashion, demanded that not a word of it be changed during the filming. Consequently, every scene is full of dialogue with her cerebral polemics, sometimes heavy-handed but often sharply clever, much of it highlighting her philosophy of objectivism. She has the ideal partner-in-crime in director King Vidor, who brings his trademark melodramatic flourishes to a feverish pitch here. The result is often laughable for its excesses but irresistible for the Baroque style Vidor fluidly instills with every preposterous story turn.
At the core of the time-spanning plot is Howard Roark, a supremely talented, uncompromising architect whose ego reigns supreme and whose selfishness ultimately marks him as a true success in his field. Interestingly, while Roark's designs bear a deliberate resemblance to Frank Lloyd Wright's prairie style, they more importantly retain a timeless, contemporary feel. His philosophical adversary is Ellsworth Toohey, an architectural critic for the New York Banner, a pompous elitist who values mediocrity as a means to subdue the masses. In between Roark and Toohey is the Banner's owner, tycoon Gail Wynand, whose successful climb out of his Hell's Kitchen background has given him unprecedented power to influence the masses. While he is Toohey's boss, Wynand gradually comes to admire Roark's talent and individualism.
Complicating matters considerably is Dominique Francon, the headstrong daughter of a successful architect, whose primal attraction to Roark is mixed with self-loathing over what she envisions as his doomed visions. Roark's polar opposite can be found in his former classmate and rival architect Peter Keating, a man devoid of ideals and more than willing to accommodate the masses to ensure his livelihood. Their various interactions eventually lead to a melodramatic climax which has Roark secretly designing an expansive low-income housing project only to see it bastardized in construction. His fate hangs in the balance as he cannot reconcile the compromise made to his vision.
While obviously too old in the early scenes, Gary Cooper is able to tap into Roark's darker side while dexterously maintaining his heroic standing. In quite a contrast to the amiable speech he gives in the climax of Frank Capra's "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town", he delivers the particularly lengthy, verbose courtroom speech with conviction. In only her second film, a 22-year old Patricia Neal is certainly a sizzling, glamorous presence as Dominique, and she makes the most of her rather impossible role even though Vidor seems to be encouraging her to go overboard frequently. Nowhere is this more evident than the hilariously over-the-top first encounters between Roark and Dominique when she thinks he is a lowly, testosterone-charged quarry worker (with one big gyrating drill!)
As Wynand, Raymond Massey is able to lend surprising humanism to a man who finds in Roark his one opportunity to take a heroic stand. Robert Douglas overdoes Toohey's effete manner, but he does become the villain you love to hate. The weak link in the cast is Kent Smith as the simpering Keating, melting way too easily in the background. Adding immeasurably to the film's Baroque dimensions are the crescendo-filled music of the legendary Max Steiner, the deep shadows pervasive in Robert Burks' masterful cinematography, and the almost expressionistic sets by Edward Carrere and William L. Kuehl (note how ludicrously huge Wynand's office is). With no accompanying commentary track, the 2006 DVD contains just two extras - the original theatrical trailer and a strictly by-the-numbers short, just eighteen minutes, on the making of the film.
Movie Review: Deliciously dotty!
Summary: 4 Stars
This has to be, by any measure, one of the most bizarre films ever made based, of course, upon one of the dottiest books! With the character of Howard Roark, Rand personified her own unique `objectivist' philosophy and Vidor put it on the screen in the form of Gary Cooper who enunciates his lines even more robotically than usual rather as if he can't quite believe what he is being required to say! The script, penned by Rand herself, requires that almost every character deliver their lines as if each were their last and most heroic utterance! The symbolism, too, is hardly subtle. For example, in one scene the heroine, Dominique Francon, played by Patricia Neal, beautiful but hard, frigid and sanctimonious, first encounters Roark while he chooses to work as a day labourer in her father's quarry rather than prostitute his architectural `genius' in the pursuit of wealth and wordly acclaim. She stands looking down on this `tall, gaunt' man piercing the hard, rigid rock façade with a large drill that he holds tightly as if it were an extension of his arm. Naturally, the rock crumbles under the force of this penetration! We then see her later, obsessed by this image, breaking the marble fireplace in her bedroom as a pretext to get Roark to come to her. Needless, to say the course of this true love just wasn't meant to run smoothly and Roark deserts Dominique in order to return to New York in response to a request from a wealthy, and obviously discerning, patron to design and build an apartment block. It is here, on the opening night of the controversial building, that the two are temporarily reunited.
The other central character Gail Wynand, who employs Dominique as a columnist on his paper `The Banner' - a kind of 1940's The Sun - shares many of Roark's characteristics although, ironically, his immense wealth is based upon pandering to the needs of the masses rather than standing alone as Roark chooses to do. It is Roark's integrity that ultimately wins Wynand, played by Raymond Massey, over and the two men, recognizing a mutual kinship, become almost inseparable friends, much to the vexation and bewilderment of Dominique who, by now, is Wynand's wife. Thus there ensues a curious, almost, troilistic relationship in which the female plays the role of the observer. In this respect Roark's treatment of Dominique might be viewed as somewhat sadistic.
Ultimately it is the patent absurdity of the script and the `heroic' style of acting that combine to produce a deliciously weird and compelling concoction that, because of these very qualities, one never tires of viewing.
Movie Review: One hell of a movie!
Summary: 4 Stars
What a movie!
This one transcends most over-the-top potboilers of its -- or any -- era. In some circles, it's a near-classic film. What we have is the story of Howard Roark, a man of principle who cannot get work as an architect because he will not compromise his skills by conforming to meet only what has been done before. He will not allow his work to become a committee project.
Patricia Neal is Dominique Francon, a spoiled woman who is determined she will never love anyone because no one will ever be worthy of her love, a love that only a man of principle could aspire to. Since, in her experience, there are no such men, she is determined to be cold-hearted and removed.
One day, though, she sees Howard Roark in a granite quarry. Her attraction to him, it seems, is purely animal magnetism. She storms and stews. She frantically paces in her bedroom. She seethes with unbridled angst and determination. In an act of lustful desperation, she smashes a beautiful marble hearth in order to get Roark into her bedroom in order to make a connection with him.
He measures the hearth and orders the marble. When the marble arrives, he sends a mason to install it. Dominique takes this as an act of indifference on Roark's part, and it infuriates her. She chases him down and whacks him across the face with a riding crop.
The rest must be seen to be believed.
Raymond Massey is very good as the editor of The Banner, the newspaper that tries to destroy everything that is good and noble, etc.,etc.,etc.
It has one of the most glorious Max Steiner scores EVER.
This is one of those movies that goes on and on, and, yet, there is NEVER A DULL MOMENT.
I don't recall the novel of "The Fountainhead" being this brassy and -- for lack of a more-appropriate word -- trashy.
Thus, I can highly recommend "The Fountainhead" as both a novel and as a movie, both of which exist independent of the other...with the movie getting the 'you'd never imagine this in a million years' award for its adaptation, especially given that it's Ayn Rand, herself, who scripted the film.
This is one hell of a movie that everyone ought to see!
Movie Review: A Flawed Film -- but Still Well Worth Watching
Summary: 4 Stars
The Good --
Gary Cooper as Howard Roark. Sure he's a few years older than he should be for this character, but I like him in this role, and I've always been moved by his trial speech, other reviewers to the contrary.
Patricia Neal as Dominique. She even looks like a younger, more attractive version of Ayn Rand herself.
Also fine cinematography and good supporting performances by Kent Smith as Peter Keating and Henry Hull, Ray Collins, and Jerome Cowan.
The Not-So-Good --
Robert Douglas is a fine villain, but perhaps he's a little too much so as Ellsworth Toohey. I would have liked to have seen Clifton Webb ("Laura") in this role.
Raymond Massey is okay, but I've never been comfortable with him as Gail Wynand. Orson Welles -- still relatively thin and handsome at this point in his career -- as the newspaper publisher (echoes of Citizen Kane) Wynand would've been perfect -- though I understand that Rand was against casting Welles in any role. Too bad.
The Ugly --
The set design. A few of the designs that are meant to represent Roark's buildings are okay, but many more are like some bad parody of Frank Lloyd Wright or Richard Neutra. This is a major flaw in film with an architect as the hero! One might begin to side with Ellsworth Toohey at some point.
Despite those flaws, this film is very entertaining -- yes, perhaps a bit campy at times -- and well worth checking out -- though the definitive film version of Rand's novel has yet to be made.