ThiefHott Too much of everything

BootDigest Such a frustrating disappointment

Pluskylang Great Film overall

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Karl Ericsson King Vidor made The Crowd and Our Daily Bread. It's impossible that he couldn't smell a faschist from a mile away - so why did he do this Movie? I guess he desperately needed Money or maybe it was a deal, similar to that that made Elia Kazaan betray his friends a few years later. Who knows? What we know for sure however is that Ayn Rand was a real Stinko and her views only possible in a deeply fascist society, which the US society Always was and still is. I refuse to explain further because it is impossible to explain the self-evident without dirtyin one's hands in the process.

grz-98-880629 There are many ways to watch this movie, and the way you choose to watch it will tend to determine how you rate it. You might compare it to the book, or set it against a standard of expression for a philosophical idea. Or, you just might watch it absolutely for itself, in a sort of self-defined manner. Everything depends upon the standard of judgment.I admit that there were parts of this movie that seemed awkward or condensed from a story perspective. However, such as each his or her own, we tend to like a movie that hooks us, often by attaching to something inside ourselves. Something in the movie with which we identify.What I loved about the movie is the essential message: the man's own belief in himself was a stronger force than the attacks could break down. Make the man an outcast, ridicule him, take his money. Take away everything society offers. Then we see what makes the man. Such as it was for Socrates, Jesus, and many others. Take it all away and there is nothing left, but the man and the principle that the man holds. This is the integrity of the man, and it is what holds the man together, from the inside out, not the outside in.The strength of the many is not the truth, the strength of the many is simply the many. The truth can stand alone, naked, and all by itself. The less adorned, the more essential. All strength comes from the inside, that is the only true source of strength, and nothing is as strong if reliant upon an external.Roark listens to the kingdom that is inside of him, and he wins without ever attacking, simply by staying true to himself.

Julie Kinnear The Fountainhead (1949) was released by Warner Bros. and is based on author Ayn Rand's literary masterpiece of the same name. The film stars film legend Gary Cooper as headstrong architect Howard Roark, Patricia Neal as idealist Dominique Francon, and Raymond Massey as newspaper magnate Gail Wynand. Directed by King Vidor and scored by Max Steiner, The Fountainhead is a beautiful example of Hollywood at its finest. It illustrates the cut-throat reality of real estate, architecture, and the public's insatiable appetite for tradition and otherwise mundane structures that populate their city and suburban spaces. The film begins by depicting Roark's undeserved expulsion from university. His dean proclaims him too unique and forward-thinking for the average man's traditional sensibilities and declares that Roark won't amount to much if he sticks to architecture as a profession. Roark's designs are ahead of their time: presenting sleek, unblemished lines and curves on both residential and commercial buildings that any other architect would stick Grecian accents on before calling it a day. The public and the community's builders cannot see past Roark's visionary designs to recognize the greatness and genius that undulates within each one.Howard Roark quickly becomes a starving artist because he refuses to adapt his designs to fit the mob's consensus. No one will hire him and anyone who does consider commissioning him for a job attempts to re-work his plans and incorporate more traditional accents and flourishes onto his buildings. Roark stands firm and refuses to alter his designs despite the fact this means that he is kissing his career as a successful architect goodbye. After having gone nearly two years without a single job, Roark is forced to accept a position working in a granite quarry, drilling into vast white sheets of marble to make a living. The work is laborious, tedious, and overwhelmingly exhausting, yet Roark remains stalwart and committed to performing his task to the best of his abilities. Gary Cooper excelled at playing righteous characters with strong, determined backbones and he is completely mesmerizing in the role of Howard Roark in The Fountainhead.Dominique Francon (Neal) is a woman determined not to become a slave to any man or object. She is flawed, certainly, but her hesitancy to belong to any one person rings true to today's feminists and gender equality seekers. She is just as headstrong and stubborn as Howard Roark is and it's only natural that the two characters are immediately drawn to each other after spotting one another at the granite quarry. The relationship between Howard and Dominique is sultry yet damaged, tender yet violent. Dominique is a spoiled socialite but her one redeeming quality is that she recognizes talent and stays true and loyal to it as she does when she is introduced to Roark's designs and work ethic. Once Roark gets back on his feet again and is commissioned to design a luxury high-rise apartment tower in the city, his modern designs are ridiculed not by the builder who sought Roark out specifically for his architectural prowess, but by the public and their destructive criticism is egged on by one of the city's most prominent newspapers, The Banner, which is owned by Gail Wynand (Massey).Lambasted by the public, the press, and his fellow architects, Roark perseveres with his modern designs and, once completed, the apartment tower is hailed as being a truly magnificent and original piece of architecture. His critics are silenced — temporarily — and his work quickly gains popularity.Unfortunately, any man's (or woman's) climb to the top of his or her profession is rarely an easy one. The way up is paved with rejection, ridicule, dangerous temptations, and ill will — all of this causes Howard Roark, no matter how strong of a constitution he has, to stumble. His pride and his unwillingness to change result in a total professional upheaval and Roark is forced to defend himself in court, risking not only his livelihood but his professional reputation as well. Still, through thick and thin, Dominique Francon remains a constant fixture in Roark's life, defending him to the last and sticking by him in his darkest hour. She has unwittingly become a slave — the very thing she was determined to avoid — and she discovers that there is nowhere she'd rather be than in the arms of Howard Roark.The Fountainhead is a film full of elitism, pride, vanity, and defeatist attitudes. It is also one of the most beautifully shot classic black and white films I've ever seen! Its cinematography and set design hearkens back to the German expressionist masterpiece Metropolis (1927) in which the world is broken into two social classes: the workers and the elite. The Fountainhead's cinematography has an almost film noir quality about it; plenty of smoke, hard edges and clean angles, shadowy spaces, and awesomely cropped longshots. Lightness and darkness fight for screen time here and the victor is a marvellous visual blend of hard and soft modern film celluloid.The only aspect of the film that I had a slight problem with was the evident lack of chemistry between the two romantic leads (Cooper and Neal). They each portrayed their characters well, but that special, essential spark and fire was missing from the finished version of the film. Perhaps the studio, producers, and director (King Vidor) were well aware of this issue because, though Cooper and Neal were two of the story's major characters, they didn't share a large amount of screen time. Rather, the majority of their scenes were filmed separately.http://juliekinnear.com/blogs/the-fountainhead-movie

baisa I love Ayn Rand's novel, but this film version is unfortunately a mixed bag. Just a quick capsule review:The Good:* Rand's screenplay was excellent (she was a screenwriter in Hollywood, earlier in her career, and also wrote a number of plays, so unlike some authors who butcher their own work, hers was excellent. And her contract guaranteed it was basically shot as she wrote it.) That said though, a movie this short is just *too* short to really do the novel justice; for example, the character of Peter Keating, who even has an entire 1/4th of the book named for him, is only in a few brief scenes in the movie.* Raymond Massey's portrayal of Gail Wynand. Massey understood the character, and really gave me that great sense of being what I had imagined from the book. (That same great joy most of us got from the characters in Jackson's LOTR movies...)The OK:* many have complained about Patricia Neal, but I liked her as Dominique--and that ahem "infamous" scene (that I shall not spoil) was really something shocking at that time in cinema!The Bad:* even though Rand selected Cooper, he was really way too old to play Roark by the time this was made into a movie--you almost feel like laughing in the first scene when the dean is telling a 40++something man that he is being kicked out of college. Cooper also seemed to fall into the trap of thinking that a man of reason is like Spock--devoid of emotion. And even though the courtroom speech is great, you didn't get the sense he really understood it.* a property of this immense stature deserved a big budget, color film--the production itself was obviously low-budget, with many obvious miniatures shots that even at that time should have been much better doneThe Ugly:* oh, dear, the Toohey character was so off the mark, they could have used it later to fuel the moon landings--in the book, Toohey is refined, witty, slender--even frail-- the very embodiment of a self-effacing, humble intellectual. In the movie, he is a crude, arch caricature, with a long cigarette holder, stout belly, booming domineering demeanor, just oozing "evil autocrat" from the first frameSummary:Overall, despite its flaws, I have to say I did thoroughly enjoy The Fountainhead--the core of the story is there, and the condensation struck the right balance between drama and ideas, keeping both in balance, while selecting the key aspects of each from the much deeper and longer novel. So I have no hesitation in recommending it, although I would strongly suggest reading the novel first, then watching the movie.