The Fountainhead

Rating:
Summary: Marred only by an imperfect performance
Review: Ayn Rand, author of *The Fountainhead*, did a great job of adapting her novel for the silver screen. The screen play does a supurb job of picking the crucial lines and events, so that the plot of a 700 page book fits comfortably in a 2 hour movie. I highly recommend this film to the seasoned Rand fan and the newcomer alike.

Unfortunately, the tight plot and excellent screenplay are marred by sub-par acting and delivery. Lines early in the movie are delivered by actors who appearantly don't understand their meaning. The lack of proper intonation, emphasis, and pause make the plot more difficult to follow (so much so that it helps to read the book first). On the positive side, Patrica Neal put in an impressive performance as Dominique. Gary Cooper is also a relatively good fit for Howard Roark, although his delivery of Roark's courtroom speech and his expression in the final scene leave much to be desired.

In spite of these flaws, *The Fountainhead* and its theme are too good for anyone to miss. This is a great movie to see and a good one to keep.

Rating:
Summary: Pressure can have unintended consequences . . .
Review: Is what Howard Roark (Gary Cooper) tells Dominique Francon (Patricia Neal) about her fireplace. They're talking about er...marble.

This is in a scene which occurs shortly after their first encounter, when Dominique spots Roark and his muscular forearm working at a quarry operating a drilling machine into the stone.

After a long and prolongued silence which ranks among the best moments in cinema, she asks, from her height above the pit: "Why are you looking at me?" Roark replies: "For the same reason you're looking at me."

And if you think that's a good moment, wait till Roark's climactic speech to the jury. Over five minutes long. (What! A movie audience sitting still through a speech? Impossible!) and absolutely spellbinding.

The film version of Ayn Rand's bestselling novel was directed by the expressionist master, King Vidor, and the screenplay written by, of all people, Ayn Rand.

Who, during a pre-production party accosted Jack L. Warner and warned him that if he cheapened or otherwise dumbed down her work, she would dynamite his studio. She nmeant it. Jack smiled and gave her a cigar.

The Fountainhead is the story of a hero who wins.

By hero, we mean an uncompromising man of genius and absolute integrity. This seems as far fetched to us as Cyrano fighting a hundred armed swordsmen---and winning! (Rostand was a major influence for Rand ) It's clearly impossible. He's not in Russia, so he won't be shot, it's not that explicit--it's America, he's bound to quietly fade into obscurity and failure. It would be naive to suppose otherwise, so how can this be a triumph instead of a tragedy?

Thematically that's the question that Roark's alter egos Gail Wynand (Raymond Massey) and Dominique Francon ask themselves. Gail is the billionare owner of an "Enquirer" type of news rag who rose from poverty by giving the suckers what they wanted. He lives by the credo "Oppress or be oppressed."

Dominique wants to want nothing, the logical credo of a beautifull woman who is convinced that beauty and greatness have no chance at all in this world. We first meet her as she's destroying of a statue of a Greek god. She's fallen in love with it and can't bear the pain of neeeding it, or anything else.

As usual with Rand, these are tortured giants, not the "folks next door"

Critics of Rand are right in stating that they are improbable beings. (Name a great man or woman of history who isn't).

Roark does make Conan the Barbarian look like a wimp by comparison. But you see, that's the fun of it. As are her villains, who are NOT romanticized ( forget "Bonnie and Clyde" , "The Godfather" and the rest of zillions of ever so cool bad guys we've been fed by Hollywood for decades) they are chilling parasites, exemplified in the character of Ellsworh Toohey.

I'ts Ayn Rand, people. Teenage girl sexual fantasies out of Danielle Steele combined with the mind of an Aristotle! A strange but wonderfull combination.

And as to Cooper, Neal and Massey, their acting is phenomenal. Perfect casting and flawless directing by Vidor.

A true classic.

Rating:
Summary: You don't need to know about the book to enjoy this film
Review: While it was based on Ayn Rand's book, Ayn Rand personally altered the story to adapt it to film. It is a great movie that really makes the viewer think about many things including individualism, selfishness, and even what is right and wrong. For many people who take these notions as given from a very young, questioning them with an adult mind is a good idea. If you enjoy this movie, be sure to pick up and read some of Ayn Rand's non-fiction.

Rating:
Summary: No, see the movie first, then read the book!
Review: Since David O. Selznick (producer of "Gone With the Wind" and "Rebecca") didn't produce this as a faithful adaptation of the novel, but Henry Blanke ("The Maltese Falcon" and "Casablanca") DID, I recommend seeing the movie first. When you read the novel first, you cast it, design sets and play it out in your mind, and in my mind, Howard Roark is played by Cary Grant, Ingrid Bergman is Dominique, and Orson Welles plays a thinly-veiled Charles Foster Kane, aka Gail Wynand. Screenplay by Charles Brackett and Ben Hecht, directed by Howard Hawks, Technicolor, music by Bernard Herrmann.

Anyways, since that's all in my mind's eye, let us deal with what's really there:

This film is the greatest example of post-German expressionism after World War II. Visually, it's overflowing with licht und schatten worthy of Lang and Murnau. This is the movie's greatest achievement, deftly accomplished by cinematographer Robert Burks, who confines Gary Cooper (the movie's martyred saint) in a shadow-world so oppressing, that it rivals Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" and Hitchcock's "I Confess" (for which Burks was also DP, as he was on all Hitch's films from the early 1950s through Marnie, in 1964, with the exception of "Psycho") for the sense of loneliness and psychological isolation which crowd in the hero.

Burks owes a lot to "Citizen Kane" in the use of low-camera-angles employed in projecting the movie's tragic hero, Gail Wynand, played by Raymond Massey. Massey brings a British-Canadian flair to the role that is completely outrageous and incongruous with the role's Hell's Kitchen origins. So what! As with Cary Grant, Massey succeeds in the "willing-suspension-of-disbelief" department when it comes to ignoring his British accent.

Burks' camera lingers longingly and tenderly on screen siren Patricia Neal, as Dominique. This is when REAL HOT WOMEN got Hollywood roles, and when the likes of Marilyn Monroe "replaced" Jane Russell and Kim Novak was groomed as the next Rita Hayworth. The scene in which Neal visits Coop's apartment with the none-too-subtle white fur bust ornament above her evening gown is priceless in the glamor department. A few reviewers call this movie "dated." If by dated, they mean not having untalented, unalluring and underfed matchsticks like Gwyneth Paltrow and Calista Flockheart, then, yes, "The Fountainhead" is dated.

Britisher Robert Douglas plays Ellsworth Toohey, the rabble-rousing colmunist with over-the-top and villainous aplomb. Wielding his ever-present cigarette holder with blatant swishiness designed to circumvent the Hayes' office censors, Douglas gives the best flamboyant-homosexual-villian performance this side of Robert Walker, as the tortured Bruno in Hitchcock's "Strangers on a Train."

Rounding out this bombastic Expressionist tour-de-force is Max Steiner's equally plush and bombastic Romantic score, which uses heavy brass and low strings to provide an aural sledgehammer that sets the action onscreen to the passionate sturm und drang of Tristan und Isolde. They don't make movie music like this anymore. Composer David Raksin ("Laura") once quipped that 1940s movie music overwhelmed the listener not only with foreboding, but with "fifthboding."

Again, compare Steiner's "maximalism" (no pun intended) with the oat-bran sparseness of today's so-called composers such as Philip Glass (minimalist is too big a word to describe his simplistic, monotonous, scratchings) and Michael Nyman.

"The Fountainhead" is a movie made about giants, by giants. Reality be damned, this movie is worthy of "Citizen Kane," "Metropolis" and "Double Indemnity."

Now, once you've seen the movie, then read the book, which is even better! Do it the other way around, and you'll find yourself "what-if"ing the Fountainhead that could've been, rather than basking in this sterling example of 1940s cinema.

Rating:
Summary: Absolute Hookum and a pure joy!
Review: As an Architect, my opinion is biased by actual experience in this field, but, this movie made me laugh so hard the first time I saw it, it became one of my all time favorites. No architect I have ever met acted anywhere near as self rightious as Roarke, they'de be working at MickieD's the rest of there lifes, as NO ONE would ever hire them, not even to clean pools. Architecture is about knowing your client needs and providing a solution that meets all the requirements of the client, city, and context. That being said, this movies a HOOT!!!

First off, too all the Rand-ites out there, THIS IS A MOVIE! get over the fact that the book is better, every book is better than the movie, thats the nature of the beast.

For the Non-Rand-ites out there, SEE IT SEE IT SEE IT. This movie is a melodramotic potboiler of bad movie bliss. Dont get me wrong, the production values are excellent, its beautifully shot and the cinematography is terrific. The archtectural projects are really spectacular and completely impossible to build, so they are way over the top. But the script is pure Hooey! and the music is sooooo overly-dramatic. Thats what makes this such a great film too watch. Only Ann Rand could take a good novel and cram it into such a laughably compacted screenplay. I felt I has watching cliffnotes from the novel. In the first 5 minutes a year of the story goes by, and the whole film is like that.

There are some very good moments in the film though, topped by Coopers speech to the jury. But the best sceen is after the "drills in the quarry" scene when Patrica Oneill is thinking of Cooper and in the background are images of drills with this completely campy Xylophone music acompanying it. Its one of the most overtly sexual suggestive scenes ever put of film and it hilarious, and dont forget to wait till the end, when you can see the Worlds Greatest 200 story Phallic Symbol ever created on film in the Wymann Building, with Cooper standing on top of course!

Rating:
Summary: Great!!
Review: If you liked the book... get this movie.

Rating:
Summary: HOKUM INDEED!
Review: "The Fountainhead" as a film is true entertainment bliss. Stilted, talky, cerebral, over-the-top dialogue, wonderful conceptual imagery in Rand's contempt for the masses, beautifully shot and directed and an utter joy to watch the actors ramble about. I just love it.

Rating:
Summary: To the glory of man!
Review: Ayn Rand's masterpiece novel loses none of its plot and pace in this, somewhat shorter, film production. The theme of the film is: the individual verses the collective. And the individual, in this case played by Gary Cooper in the form of Howard Roark, is brilliantly portrayed through a sense of self-belief, determination and sheer ability. His ideological opposite, Elsworthy Toohey, is also well acted and personifies the evil collectivist who renounces all individual achievements and believes that men should act as their brother's keepers. Then there are in-between characters too - those of mixed premises - such as Gail Wynand and Dominique Francon. All of these dramatic individuals play their part in a compelling and well thought through story.

Perhaps one of the most impressive (although unsurprising given the author) facets of the film is that it actually has an underlying message: it's not merely a concoction of disjointed and pointless scenes. The climax and meaning to the whole story can be found in Roark's own testimony at his court case: his statement and explanation that man exists for his own sake, not for the sake of others.

This is definitely a film for those who believe in the hero of man the creator, though it will, almost certainly, be too close for comfort for the collectivist crowd!

Rating:
Summary: Okay film but full of prejudices
Review: The movie itself as an artistic film still holds up well, though it may not reach the heights of some other great Vidor films such as The Crowd. Gary Cooper actually does well in his role, though some might find him a bit miscast. The real problems of the movie are its prejudiced portrayal of traditional architecture and the flawed idea that creativity must be somehow new...Much of what is creative is not new.

1. The movie's prejudiced view of all classical/traditional architects as being narrow minded copycats of the past... well, does that mean Michaelangelo and Palladio were not creative artists? Sure classical architecture doesn't readily fit tall office buildings, but it is still beautiful and well-suited to smaller structures. With fresh inspiration, it can adapt and take on many creative directions, for example see Bernini's masterpieces or Thomas Jefferson's Monticello or Robert Adam's brilliant interiors or the many beautiful state capitol buildings. Besides the majority of people love it. And that's a lot more than can be said for most contemporary styles. Interestingly, a new approach to large office buildings may be to build much of it underground with only one or two stories overground in a beautiful classcial style. This fresh approach was successfuly used in Haifa, Israel for some Baha'i buildings.

2. Another problem with this movie is that it portrays people who love decorative detail as being uncivilized. What right does anyone have to criticize people who love classical details like arches and columns? That is what early American architecture was like, isn't it? Back then nobody said loving the majesty of columns and pediments was backwards.

3. The third problem with this movie is that it has a lot of too overtly stated messages, such as the well meant but biased celebration of anything new as being creative. Much of what looks new seems that way because it's just so visually dissonant like some of the rather ugly architecture this movie tries to present as masterpieces. Ironically, everyday people sometimes have better taste than architects brainwashed by modernist jargon and misleading art theories. Overall an interesting film that may mean different things to different people.

Rating:
Summary: A movie with a BIG MESSAGE!
Review: And then some... There doesn't seem to be one line in this film (or in the book) that doesn't telegraph Rand's "philosophy" like a punch to the proboscis. The pompous & silly propagandizing is worse than Riefenstahl's films for Hitler. But it was prescient in one very key sense. It anticipated the strong need of today's viewing & reading public for easy-to-understand formulas that substitute for real thinking (& "self" understanding). Good cinematography though. Vidor always did have a great feel for the WPA look.