A 1949 screen interpretation of Ayn Rand’s classic novel starring Gary Cooper and a very young, lovely Patricia O’Neil, I watched this mainly due to the recent publicity surrounding the 50th anniversary of Rand’s other big novel, Atlas Shrugged, and since Rand herself wrote the screenplay. I read both novels back in college but, unlike some well-known people as former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan and rocker Geddy Lee, I saw gaping holes in her logic as well as a serious deficit in sympathy for other humans. Shrugged, oddly, was never made into a movie despite its continuing popularity, though Angelina Jolie is spearheading a production that may be released next year.
The Fountainhead, directed by Hollywood vet King Vidor (Duel in the Sun, Northwest Passage), is the story of Howard Roarke (Cooper). Unwilling to submit to the grinding impersonalization forced on anyone who shows signs of real talent, beginning with college professors, moving on to his early bosses and then media critics after he finds wealthy patrons brave enough to erect his out of the mainstream building designs.
After losing one contract too many when he was insistant on his exact plan being built, Roarke flees the city to work with his hands in a granite quarry. Who should be there but Dominic Francon, running away from her weak-willed fiance (who was Roarke’s classmate and a partner in Francon’s father’s firm), who rides her horse over the hill one day to see what’s happening at the quarry. Of course the two see each other and the attraction is immediate.
Roarke won’t marry her, though, until she becomes as strong an individual as he; instead she marries the owner of the newspaper at which she used to work. A newspaper which, on the urging of its architecture critic, had run a smear campaign against a residential skyscraper Roarke designed. Strangely, Roarke and Dominic’s husband (played suavely by Raymond Massey) become great friends–which makes the girl quite nervous as hubby has never been told about their love–and Roarke’s career takes off.
Finally, Roarke wins the contract for a huge low-income housing development through the subterfuge of submitting his bid under the name of Dominic’s former fiance. The city officials agree to the condition that it be built as designed, absolutely, but then just before construction begins that darn, and influential, newspaper critic (Robert Douglas, slick enough as Toohey to make me wonder if he’s half snake) gets two other architects brought in and they make a huge number of ridiculous changes.
Roarke has been away all this time but returns when construction is nearly complete and is disgusted. He dynamites the entire site and is arrested since he’s stayed to surrender when the police arrive. The entire movie up to this point has simply been an exercise to show us Roarke’s true character, the foolishness of those who would impose their will upon others as well as any kind of collective responsibility, and, though it isn’t easy, it’s ever too late to reach the Randian ideal.
At the trial Roarke defends himself. He essentially asks no questions in his cross of the prosecution witnesses other than to confirm the facts as he sees them, most importantly that he did design the project and his only condition and his only compensation was for it to be built exactly as designed. Nor does he call any witnesses of his own, he simply delivers a combined testimony/closing argument that (according to my Law & Order legal education) counts on jury nullification to win a not guilty result.
In fact Roarke’s entire soliloquy is a statement of Rand’s philosophy. Though Cooper’s delivery is his typical understated yet insistently firm style, it’s a poor climax for a film that has barely crawled along for the previous 90 minutes. Judged as a film, The Fountainhead becomes essentially a university lecture; surely having Rand make a documentary would have been a better choice and somehow I doubt Jolie’s Atlas Shrugged, if it gets made, will be much better.
not recommended