The Fountainhead is an ambitious adaptation of Ayn Rand's immensely popular novel of the same name. Adapting Rand is no small feat. She had a tendency to be overpoweringly didactic, a trait that she perfected in The Fountainhead and then extended with the later Atlas Shrugged.
It is often said that every college student becomes enamored of Ayn Rand, and then they grow up. I too had a young man's flirtation with Ms. Rand, but ultimately came to regard her much vaunted Objectivism with the same amused disdain with which I eventually came to view most philosophies based on naïve absolutes. Indeed, if you're not a Rand fan, you will probably find this film a bit tiresome.
Like her character, Howard Roark, Rand insisted that there be no modifications to her work, and that every word of her screenplay be left intact. This explains the famously dreadful dialog, as Rand, a philosopher and novelist, was prone to speeches, interminably wearisome though they may be, to advance her intellectual themes. Gary Cooper struggled with his courtroom speech, at the time the longest cinema speech in history, as did viewers who found it difficult to grasp.
Although many people regard the film as a bit of a camp oddity, it is saved from such a fate by a remarkable collection of talent. King Vidor, previously better known for silent films, imparts a visual expressiveness to the film. The legendary Max Steiner's thrilling score moves the plot majestically from one diatribe to another. Cinematographer Robert Burks, who later became the genius behind Hitchcock's inspired visual vocabulary, supplies no end of visual drama.
But the real drama, both on screen and off, was the incendiary combination of Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. Cooper, at forty-seven, was far too old to play Roark, though he makes a game effort, saddled a bit, perhaps, by his famous stoicism. Neal, an unknown ingénue, was nevertheless Cooper's equal on screen, luminous, exotic, and intelligent, and their off screen tryst simply added to the buzz about this highly anticipated project.
Rand, all of five foot two and with vast brown eyes you could drown in, saw things a bit differently to say the least. Her idea of a steamy romance scene, the rape of a woman barely out of childhood by a man twenty-five years her senior, caused many to denounce The Fountainhead, and barely made it past the censors of the day. I also got the impression that the young Miss Francon was objectified by all who knew her, again an artifact of the times, but Patricia Neal's smoldering screen presence easily pushes that issue aside.
Ultimately, despite her unrepentant pedantism, Rand's works are significant touchstones in culture, and this film captures her vision well. Still, you either love her or hate her, and those in the latter group are most likely going to hate this film as well. After all these years, I find the film interesting mainly as Patricia Neal's launching, and that alone is accomplishment enough for any movie.
Easily worthwhile for its historical significance, The Fountainhead is good cinema that almost achieved greatness. The common allusion to Frank Lloyd Wright as the model behind Roark is probably unfounded. If you know anything about Wright, including the fact that he was primarily an architect known for residential structures, it seems much more likely that the real life model for Roark was Wright's liebermeister, Louis Sullivan, the Father of the Skyscraper and of Modernism in architecture, although the structures in the film more closely resemble some absurd hybrid of Wright's later work and the urban structures of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
In any event, such concerns are incidental to the film's success. It works well and stands the test of time as a statement of Rand's ideas in a contemporary work to which she contributed heavily.
It is often said that every college student becomes enamored of Ayn Rand, and then they grow up. I too had a young man's flirtation with Ms. Rand, but ultimately came to regard her much vaunted Objectivism with the same amused disdain with which I eventually came to view most philosophies based on naïve absolutes. Indeed, if you're not a Rand fan, you will probably find this film a bit tiresome.
Like her character, Howard Roark, Rand insisted that there be no modifications to her work, and that every word of her screenplay be left intact. This explains the famously dreadful dialog, as Rand, a philosopher and novelist, was prone to speeches, interminably wearisome though they may be, to advance her intellectual themes. Gary Cooper struggled with his courtroom speech, at the time the longest cinema speech in history, as did viewers who found it difficult to grasp.
Although many people regard the film as a bit of a camp oddity, it is saved from such a fate by a remarkable collection of talent. King Vidor, previously better known for silent films, imparts a visual expressiveness to the film. The legendary Max Steiner's thrilling score moves the plot majestically from one diatribe to another. Cinematographer Robert Burks, who later became the genius behind Hitchcock's inspired visual vocabulary, supplies no end of visual drama.
But the real drama, both on screen and off, was the incendiary combination of Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal. Cooper, at forty-seven, was far too old to play Roark, though he makes a game effort, saddled a bit, perhaps, by his famous stoicism. Neal, an unknown ingénue, was nevertheless Cooper's equal on screen, luminous, exotic, and intelligent, and their off screen tryst simply added to the buzz about this highly anticipated project.
Rand, all of five foot two and with vast brown eyes you could drown in, saw things a bit differently to say the least. Her idea of a steamy romance scene, the rape of a woman barely out of childhood by a man twenty-five years her senior, caused many to denounce The Fountainhead, and barely made it past the censors of the day. I also got the impression that the young Miss Francon was objectified by all who knew her, again an artifact of the times, but Patricia Neal's smoldering screen presence easily pushes that issue aside.
Ultimately, despite her unrepentant pedantism, Rand's works are significant touchstones in culture, and this film captures her vision well. Still, you either love her or hate her, and those in the latter group are most likely going to hate this film as well. After all these years, I find the film interesting mainly as Patricia Neal's launching, and that alone is accomplishment enough for any movie.
Easily worthwhile for its historical significance, The Fountainhead is good cinema that almost achieved greatness. The common allusion to Frank Lloyd Wright as the model behind Roark is probably unfounded. If you know anything about Wright, including the fact that he was primarily an architect known for residential structures, it seems much more likely that the real life model for Roark was Wright's liebermeister, Louis Sullivan, the Father of the Skyscraper and of Modernism in architecture, although the structures in the film more closely resemble some absurd hybrid of Wright's later work and the urban structures of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.
In any event, such concerns are incidental to the film's success. It works well and stands the test of time as a statement of Rand's ideas in a contemporary work to which she contributed heavily.