Fountainhead The (1949)

What does one say about such an unusual film? Ayn Rand’s novel about individualism vs. collectivism is perhaps too complex for Hollywood to produce yet First National & Warner Bros. did try. Unfortunately the material is not well adapted which could be in part because its actors didn’t understand or subscribe to Rand’s advanced views … or director King Vidor wasn’t sure what to make of it either. In any case the result is a film filled with actors even terrific ones like Gary Cooper (playing an independent architect no less) Patricia Neal (a really strange character) and Raymond Massey (a newspaper tycoon who suddenly develops a conscience) saying lines without the appropriate emphasis or feeling. In fact it’s this absence of credible feeling that marks their performances. Kent Smith (as a talent-less architect who gives the people what they want) and especially Robert Douglas as “the villain” (a power hungry man without scruples) provide perhaps the most believable characters in this complex drama. Ray Collins Moroni Olsen and Jerome Cowan also appear.

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