The Fountainhead (film)
Encyclopedia
The Fountainhead is a 1949 American film directed by King Vidor
, based on the best-selling book of the same name
by Ayn Rand
, who wrote the screenplay adaptation.
The film and novel focus on Howard Roark, is an individualistic
young architect who chooses to struggle in obscurity rather than compromise his artistic and personal vision, following his battle to practice what the public sees as modern architecture, which he believes to be superior, despite an establishment centered on tradition-worship. The complex relationships between Roark and the various kinds of individuals who assist or hinder his progress, or both, allow the film to be at once a romantic drama and a philosophical work. Roark is Rand's embodiment of the human spirit, and his struggle represents the triumph of individualism over collectivism.
The film stars Gary Cooper
as Roark, Patricia Neal
as Dominique Francon, Raymond Massey
as Gail Wynand, Robert Douglas
as Ellsworth Toohey and Kent Smith
as Peter Keating. Although Rand's screenplay was used with minimal alterations, Rand criticized the film for elements such as editing, production design and acting. While it was initially panned by critics and lost money at the box office, the film spurred public interest in the novel, increasing its sales, and has been reappraised by contemporary critics, who deemed it to be one of King Vidor's best films.
A critic for the powerful Banner newspaper, Ellsworth Toohey, opposes Roark's individualism and volunteers to crusade in print against him. The wealthy and influential publisher, Gail Wynand, pays little attention, but approves the idea and gives Toohey a free hand.
Dominique Francon, a glamorous socialite who writes a column for the Banner, admires Roark's work and opposes the newspaper's campaign against him. She is engaged to be married to an architect herself, the unimaginative Peter Keating. She has never met or seen Roark, but she believes that he is doomed in a world that abhors individualism.
Wynand falls in love with Francon and exposes Keating as someone who values a big opportunity more than her. In the meantime, Roark is unable to find a client willing to build according to his vision. He walks away from opportunities that involve any compromise of his standards. Broke, he takes a job as a laborer in a quarry.
The quarry belongs to Francon's father and is near their summer home. The vacationing Francon visits the quarry on a whim. As Roark drills into the stone, Francon spots him and watches him work. When he sees her they openly and repeatedly stare.
Francon contrives to have Roark repair the fireplace in her bedroom. Roark mocks the pretense, and after the first visit, sends someone else to complete the repair. Expecting Roark, Francon is enraged and returns to the quarry on horseback. She finds Roark walking nearby. He again mocks her and she strikes him with her horsewhip. In the evening he invades her bedroom and rapes her.
Back in his small room, Roark finds a letter offering him a new project. He packs up and leaves. Francon goes to the quarry and learns that he quit. The boss offers to find out where he went, but she declines. She has no idea that he is Howard Roark, the brilliant architect.
Wynand offers to marry Francon, even though he is aware that she is not in love with him. Francon defers the offer until she feels a great need to punish herself. She learns Roark's true identity when they are introduced at the party opening the new building that Roark has designed.
Francon goes to Roark's apartment and offers to marry him if he gives up architecture to save himself from a hopeless struggle. Roark rejects her fears and says that they face many years apart until she overcomes the error of her thinking.
Francon finds Wynand and accepts his previous marriage proposal. Wynand agrees regardless of her true feelings or motives. Wynand discovers Roark as an architect and hires him to build Francon a secluded country home. Wynand and Roark become friends which drives Francon to jealousy over Roark.
Keating resurfaces. He has been employed to create an enormous housing project. It is beyond his skill, so he requests Roark's help. On one condition, Roark says, that if Keating promises to build it exactly as designed, Roark will design the project while permitting Keating to take all the credit.
Toohey breaks down Keating into privately confessing that Roark designed the project. With prodding from the envious Toohey, the firm backing the project decides to alter Keating's design. They erect a housing development that departs from Roark's design in crucial ways. Roark decides, with Francon's secret help, to rig explosives to the project and destroy it.
Roark goes on trial. He is painted as a public enemy by every newspaper other than the Banner, where, breaking with previous policy, Wynand campaigns publicly on Roark's behalf. But under Wynand's nose, Toohey has permeated the Banner with men loyal to him. Toohey has them quit and uses his clout to keep others out. He leads a campaign against the Banner's new policy that all but kills the paper.
Operating the fading Banner with help only from Francon and a few loyal men, Wynand is exhausted by the struggle. Faced with losing the enterprise, he saves the Banner by bringing back Toohey's gang to join the rest of the public in condemning Roark.
Calling no witnesses, Roark addresses the court on his own behalf. He makes a long and eloquent speech defending his right to offer his own work on his own terms. He is found innocent of the charges against him.
A guilt-stricken Wynand summons the architect to his office. He presents him with a contract to design the Wynand Building, to be the greatest structure of all, with complete freedom to build it however Roark sees fit. Wynand maintains an impenetrably formal demeanor with his one-time friend. As soon as Roark leaves the room, Wynand commits suicide.
In the final scene, Francon enters the construction site of the Wynand Building, and identifies herself as Mrs. Roark. She rides the elevator towards Roark, awaiting her atop his magnificent new building.
Warner Bros.
purchased the film rights to Ayn Rand
's The Fountainhead
in late 1943, asking Rand to write the screenplay. Rand agreed, on the condition that not a single word of her dialogue be changed. The Fountainhead went into production, with Mervyn LeRoy
hired to direct, but the production was delayed. LeRoy said that the delay was the result of the influence of the War Production Board, spurred by Rand's anti-Russian politics.
Three years later, production commenced under the direction of King Vidor
, although there were disputes between Rand, Vidor and Warner Bros. throughout the production. Vidor wanted Humphrey Bogart
to play Howard Roark, while Rand wanted Gary Cooper
to play the part. Cooper was cast alongside Lauren Bacall
as Dominique Francon, but Bacall was replaced by Patricia Neal
. Cooper criticized Neal's audition as being badly acted, but she was cast against his judgment; during the production, Cooper and Neal began an affair.
, Frank Lloyd Wright
and the Civic Light Opera Company of Pittsburgh.
While communism
is not explicitly named, the film is also interpreted as a criticism of this ideology, as well as the lack of individual identity in a collective life under a communist society. However, the novel's criticisms were aimed at Franklin D. Roosevelt
's New Deal
, and this is reflected in Rand's endorsement of modernism in architecture in both the book and the film. In adapting her novel, Rand utilized the melodrama
genre to dramatize the novel's sexuality and aesthetic of modernistic architecture.
Patricia Neal
remembered that Rand often visited the set to "protect her screenplay". During filming, Vidor decided that Roark's speech at the end of the film was too long, and decided to omit segments that he did not feel relevant to the plot. After learning of Vidor's descision, Rand appealed to Jack Warner
to honor her contract, and Warner persuaded Vidor to shoot the scene as it was filmed.
Rand later wrote a note thanking Warner and the studio for allowing the preservation of the novel's "theme and spirit, without being asked to make bad taste concessions, such as a lesser studio would have demanded."
The production design by Edward Carrere is strongly derived from an expressionist
influence. The film's ending image depicting Roark standing atop the highest skyscraper in New York, which he designed and built, evokes Futurism
. During filming, Rand told Gerald Loeb that she didn't like the designs, and later wrote that Carrere had been trained as an architect, but had not practiced architecture. Rand described his designs as being copied from pictures of "horrible modernistic buildings", and judged them as "embarrassingly bad".
. Chris Matthew Sciabarra
described Steiner as a "veritable film score architect [...] perhaps, the "fountainhead" of film music" in analyzing Steiner's appropriateness in composing the film's music, and says that Steiner's cues "immediately call to mind the story of Howard Roark."
In Sciabarra's article about the film's music, he quotes philosophy professor Glenn Alexander Magee, who says that Steiner's score suggested "a strong affinity for The Fountainhead [...] [it] perfectly conveys the feel of a Rand novel". Magee suggests that Steiner's music accents themes of redemption and renewal present in the story, providing insight into Roark's opposition, Francon's sense of life, and Wynand's flaw.
Excerpts from Steiner's score were included in RCA Victor's tribute to the composer, an album featuring the National Philharmonic Orchestra
conducted by Charles Gerhardt
and released on LP in 1973 and digitally remastered for CD.
television series Hollywood Calling with Milton Berle
to discuss their upcoming films, which included The Fountainhead and Berle's Always Leave Them Laughing
. The film premiered at the Warners Hollywood theater. Warner Bros. erected two banks of bleachers on Hollywood Boulevard to accommodate fans that were expected to mob the premiere. Neal attended the premiere with Kirk Douglas
as her date, and the two signed autographs for fans. The Los Angeles Times wrote that the audience "strongly responded to the unusual elements in the production." After the film ended, Neal noticed that many people were avoiding her and turning their faces away, expect for Virginia Mayo
, who approached Neal and exclaimed, "My, weren't you bad!" Once Cooper saw the film as a whole, he felt that he had not delivered the final speech as he should have. Compelled by the message of Rand's novel, Cooper and Neal let it be known publicly that they were having an affair, and the public knowledge of their relationship somewhat negatively impacted the film's box office.
The Fountainhead went on to gross $2.1 million, $400,000 less than its production budget. However, sales of Rand's novel increased as a result of public interest in the book, spurred by this film. Although Rand's screenplay was used with minimal alterations, she "disliked the movie from beginning to end," complaining about its editing, acting and other elements. As a result of this film, Rand said that she would never sell any of her novels to a film company that did not allow her the right to pick the director and screenwriter as well as edit the film, as she did not want to encounter the same production problems that occurred on this film.
The Fountainhead was panned by critics in its initial release. The Hollywood Reporter
wrote of the film, "Its characters are downright weird and there is no feeling of self-identification." The Los Angeles Times said that the film would not "catch the interest of what is known as the average movie audience -- whoever they may be nowadays." The Communist
-published Daily Worker
deemed The Fountainhead to be "an openly fascist
movie". The trade magazine Variety
called the film "cold, unemotional, loquacious [and] completely devoted to hammering home the theme that man's personal integrity stands above all law." The New Yorker
deemed the film to be "asinine and inept". Cue described it as "shoddy, bombastic nonsense". Bosley Crowther
, in his review for The New York Times
, called the film "wordy, involved and pretentious" and characterized Vidor's work as a "vast succession of turgid scenes."
, which compiles reviews from a wide range of critics. Emanuel Levy
described the film as one of the few examples of an adaptation that is better than the book it was based on. Dave Kehr
said "King Vidor turned Ayn Rand's preposterous 'philosophical' novel into one of his finest and most personal films, mainly by pushing the phallic imagery so hard that it surpasses Rand's rightist diatribes." Architect David Rockwell
, who saw the film when he visited New York City in 1964, has said that the film influenced his interest in architecture and design. Rockwell also stated that, at his university, many architecture students named their dogs Roark as a tribute to the protagonist of the novel and film.
King Vidor
King Wallis Vidor was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter whose career spanned nearly seven decades...
, based on the best-selling book of the same name
The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead is a 1943 novel by Ayn Rand. It was Rand's first major literary success and brought her fame and financial success. More than 6.5 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide....
by Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
, who wrote the screenplay adaptation.
The film and novel focus on Howard Roark, is an individualistic
Individualism
Individualism is the moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, or social outlook that stresses "the moral worth of the individual". Individualists promote the exercise of one's goals and desires and so value independence and self-reliance while opposing most external interference upon one's own...
young architect who chooses to struggle in obscurity rather than compromise his artistic and personal vision, following his battle to practice what the public sees as modern architecture, which he believes to be superior, despite an establishment centered on tradition-worship. The complex relationships between Roark and the various kinds of individuals who assist or hinder his progress, or both, allow the film to be at once a romantic drama and a philosophical work. Roark is Rand's embodiment of the human spirit, and his struggle represents the triumph of individualism over collectivism.
The film stars Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...
as Roark, Patricia Neal
Patricia Neal
Patricia Neal was an American actress of stage and screen. She was best known for her film roles as World War II widow Helen Benson in The Day the Earth Stood Still , wealthy matron Emily Eustace Failenson in Breakfast at Tiffany's , middle-aged housekeeper Alma Brown in Hud , for which she won...
as Dominique Francon, Raymond Massey
Raymond Massey
Raymond Hart Massey was a Canadian/American actor.-Early life:Massey was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Anna , who was born in Illinois, and Chester Daniel Massey, the wealthy owner of the Massey-Ferguson Tractor Company. Massey's family could trace their ancestry back to the American...
as Gail Wynand, Robert Douglas
Robert Douglas (actor)
Robert Douglas was born as Robert Douglas Finlayson in Fenny Stratford, Buckinghamshire. He was a successful stage and film actor, a television director and producer....
as Ellsworth Toohey and Kent Smith
Kent Smith
Kent Smith was an American actor who had a lengthy career in film, theater, and television.Born Frank Kent Smith in New York, New York, Smith made his acting debut on Broadway in 1932 in and, after spending a few years there, moved to Hollywood, California, where he made his film debut in The...
as Peter Keating. Although Rand's screenplay was used with minimal alterations, Rand criticized the film for elements such as editing, production design and acting. While it was initially panned by critics and lost money at the box office, the film spurred public interest in the novel, increasing its sales, and has been reappraised by contemporary critics, who deemed it to be one of King Vidor's best films.
Plot
Howard Roark is an individualistic architect who follows his own artistic path in the face of conformity and mediocrity.A critic for the powerful Banner newspaper, Ellsworth Toohey, opposes Roark's individualism and volunteers to crusade in print against him. The wealthy and influential publisher, Gail Wynand, pays little attention, but approves the idea and gives Toohey a free hand.
Dominique Francon, a glamorous socialite who writes a column for the Banner, admires Roark's work and opposes the newspaper's campaign against him. She is engaged to be married to an architect herself, the unimaginative Peter Keating. She has never met or seen Roark, but she believes that he is doomed in a world that abhors individualism.
Wynand falls in love with Francon and exposes Keating as someone who values a big opportunity more than her. In the meantime, Roark is unable to find a client willing to build according to his vision. He walks away from opportunities that involve any compromise of his standards. Broke, he takes a job as a laborer in a quarry.
The quarry belongs to Francon's father and is near their summer home. The vacationing Francon visits the quarry on a whim. As Roark drills into the stone, Francon spots him and watches him work. When he sees her they openly and repeatedly stare.
Francon contrives to have Roark repair the fireplace in her bedroom. Roark mocks the pretense, and after the first visit, sends someone else to complete the repair. Expecting Roark, Francon is enraged and returns to the quarry on horseback. She finds Roark walking nearby. He again mocks her and she strikes him with her horsewhip. In the evening he invades her bedroom and rapes her.
Back in his small room, Roark finds a letter offering him a new project. He packs up and leaves. Francon goes to the quarry and learns that he quit. The boss offers to find out where he went, but she declines. She has no idea that he is Howard Roark, the brilliant architect.
Wynand offers to marry Francon, even though he is aware that she is not in love with him. Francon defers the offer until she feels a great need to punish herself. She learns Roark's true identity when they are introduced at the party opening the new building that Roark has designed.
Francon goes to Roark's apartment and offers to marry him if he gives up architecture to save himself from a hopeless struggle. Roark rejects her fears and says that they face many years apart until she overcomes the error of her thinking.
Francon finds Wynand and accepts his previous marriage proposal. Wynand agrees regardless of her true feelings or motives. Wynand discovers Roark as an architect and hires him to build Francon a secluded country home. Wynand and Roark become friends which drives Francon to jealousy over Roark.
Keating resurfaces. He has been employed to create an enormous housing project. It is beyond his skill, so he requests Roark's help. On one condition, Roark says, that if Keating promises to build it exactly as designed, Roark will design the project while permitting Keating to take all the credit.
Toohey breaks down Keating into privately confessing that Roark designed the project. With prodding from the envious Toohey, the firm backing the project decides to alter Keating's design. They erect a housing development that departs from Roark's design in crucial ways. Roark decides, with Francon's secret help, to rig explosives to the project and destroy it.
Roark goes on trial. He is painted as a public enemy by every newspaper other than the Banner, where, breaking with previous policy, Wynand campaigns publicly on Roark's behalf. But under Wynand's nose, Toohey has permeated the Banner with men loyal to him. Toohey has them quit and uses his clout to keep others out. He leads a campaign against the Banner's new policy that all but kills the paper.
Operating the fading Banner with help only from Francon and a few loyal men, Wynand is exhausted by the struggle. Faced with losing the enterprise, he saves the Banner by bringing back Toohey's gang to join the rest of the public in condemning Roark.
Calling no witnesses, Roark addresses the court on his own behalf. He makes a long and eloquent speech defending his right to offer his own work on his own terms. He is found innocent of the charges against him.
A guilt-stricken Wynand summons the architect to his office. He presents him with a contract to design the Wynand Building, to be the greatest structure of all, with complete freedom to build it however Roark sees fit. Wynand maintains an impenetrably formal demeanor with his one-time friend. As soon as Roark leaves the room, Wynand commits suicide.
In the final scene, Francon enters the construction site of the Wynand Building, and identifies herself as Mrs. Roark. She rides the elevator towards Roark, awaiting her atop his magnificent new building.
Cast
- Gary CooperGary CooperFrank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...
as Howard Roark - Patricia NealPatricia NealPatricia Neal was an American actress of stage and screen. She was best known for her film roles as World War II widow Helen Benson in The Day the Earth Stood Still , wealthy matron Emily Eustace Failenson in Breakfast at Tiffany's , middle-aged housekeeper Alma Brown in Hud , for which she won...
as Dominique Francon - Raymond MasseyRaymond MasseyRaymond Hart Massey was a Canadian/American actor.-Early life:Massey was born in Toronto, Ontario, the son of Anna , who was born in Illinois, and Chester Daniel Massey, the wealthy owner of the Massey-Ferguson Tractor Company. Massey's family could trace their ancestry back to the American...
as Gail Wynand - Kent SmithKent SmithKent Smith was an American actor who had a lengthy career in film, theater, and television.Born Frank Kent Smith in New York, New York, Smith made his acting debut on Broadway in 1932 in and, after spending a few years there, moved to Hollywood, California, where he made his film debut in The...
as Peter Keating - Robert DouglasRobert Douglas (actor)Robert Douglas was born as Robert Douglas Finlayson in Fenny Stratford, Buckinghamshire. He was a successful stage and film actor, a television director and producer....
as Ellsworth M. Toohey - Henry HullHenry HullHenry Watterson Hull was an American character actor with a unique voice, most noted for playing the lead in Universal Pictures's Werewolf of London .-Life and career:Hull was born in Louisville, Kentucky...
as Henry Cameron - Ray CollinsRay Collins (actor)Ray Bidwell Collins was an American actor in film, stage, radio, and television. One of Collins' best remembered roles was that of Lt. Arthur Tragg in the long-running series Perry Mason.- Biography :...
as Roger Enright - Moroni OlsenMoroni OlsenMoroni Olsen was an American actor.-Biography:Olsen was born in Ogden, Utah to Mormon parents Edward Arenholt Olsen and Marsha Hoverholst who named him after the Moroni found in the Book of Mormon. Some sources have claimed that Olsen's birth name was John Willard Clawson, or even John Willard...
as Chairman - Jerome CowanJerome CowanJerome Palmer Cowan was an American film and television actor. At eighteen he joined a travelling stock company, shortly afterwards enlisting in the navy in World War I. After the war he returned to the stage and became a vaudeville headliner, then gained success on the New York stage...
as Alvah Scarret
Production
Warner Bros.
Warner Bros. Entertainment, Inc., also known as Warner Bros. Pictures or simply Warner Bros. , is an American producer of film and television entertainment.One of the major film studios, it is a subsidiary of Time Warner, with its headquarters in Burbank,...
purchased the film rights to Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand was a Russian-American novelist, philosopher, playwright, and screenwriter. She is known for her two best-selling novels The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and for developing a philosophical system she called Objectivism....
's The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead
The Fountainhead is a 1943 novel by Ayn Rand. It was Rand's first major literary success and brought her fame and financial success. More than 6.5 million copies of the book have been sold worldwide....
in late 1943, asking Rand to write the screenplay. Rand agreed, on the condition that not a single word of her dialogue be changed. The Fountainhead went into production, with Mervyn LeRoy
Mervyn LeRoy
Mervyn LeRoy was an American film director, producer and sometime actor.-Early life:Born to Jewish parents in San Francisco, California, his family was financially ruined by the 1906 earthquake...
hired to direct, but the production was delayed. LeRoy said that the delay was the result of the influence of the War Production Board, spurred by Rand's anti-Russian politics.
Three years later, production commenced under the direction of King Vidor
King Vidor
King Wallis Vidor was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter whose career spanned nearly seven decades...
, although there were disputes between Rand, Vidor and Warner Bros. throughout the production. Vidor wanted Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey Bogart
Humphrey DeForest Bogart was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon.The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema....
to play Howard Roark, while Rand wanted Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
Frank James Cooper, known professionally as Gary Cooper, was an American film actor. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited to the many Westerns he made...
to play the part. Cooper was cast alongside Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall
Lauren Bacall is an American film and stage actress and model, known for her distinctive husky voice and sultry looks.She first emerged as leading lady in the Humphrey Bogart film To Have And Have Not and continued on in the film noir genre, with appearances in The Big Sleep and Dark Passage ,...
as Dominique Francon, but Bacall was replaced by Patricia Neal
Patricia Neal
Patricia Neal was an American actress of stage and screen. She was best known for her film roles as World War II widow Helen Benson in The Day the Earth Stood Still , wealthy matron Emily Eustace Failenson in Breakfast at Tiffany's , middle-aged housekeeper Alma Brown in Hud , for which she won...
. Cooper criticized Neal's audition as being badly acted, but she was cast against his judgment; during the production, Cooper and Neal began an affair.
Writing
Rand completed her screenplay in June 1944. The setting of The Fountainhead is a collective society in which individuals and new ideas of architecture are not accepted, and all buildings must be constructed in neoclassic Gothic style. Rand's screenplay criticized the film industry, depicting Roark as being demanded to follow Hollywood's mandate to "give the public what it wants", and his refusal to work without compromising his integrity in favor of the dictation of popular taste. Rand wrote a new scene for the film, in which Roark is rejected as architect for the Civic Opera Company of New York, an allusion to Edgar Kaufmann, Jr.Edgar Kaufmann, jr.
Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. was an American architect, lecturer, and author.-Early years:He was the son of Edgar J. Kaufmann, a wealthy Pittsburgh businessman and philanthropist who owned Kaufmann's department store. Edgar Jr. attended the School for Arts and Crafts at the Austrian Museum of Applied Art...
, Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright was an American architect, interior designer, writer and educator, who designed more than 1,000 structures and completed 500 works. Wright believed in designing structures which were in harmony with humanity and its environment, a philosophy he called organic architecture...
and the Civic Light Opera Company of Pittsburgh.
While communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
is not explicitly named, the film is also interpreted as a criticism of this ideology, as well as the lack of individual identity in a collective life under a communist society. However, the novel's criticisms were aimed at Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
's New Deal
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were Roosevelt's responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call...
, and this is reflected in Rand's endorsement of modernism in architecture in both the book and the film. In adapting her novel, Rand utilized the melodrama
Melodrama
The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...
genre to dramatize the novel's sexuality and aesthetic of modernistic architecture.
Patricia Neal
Patricia Neal
Patricia Neal was an American actress of stage and screen. She was best known for her film roles as World War II widow Helen Benson in The Day the Earth Stood Still , wealthy matron Emily Eustace Failenson in Breakfast at Tiffany's , middle-aged housekeeper Alma Brown in Hud , for which she won...
remembered that Rand often visited the set to "protect her screenplay". During filming, Vidor decided that Roark's speech at the end of the film was too long, and decided to omit segments that he did not feel relevant to the plot. After learning of Vidor's descision, Rand appealed to Jack Warner
Jack Warner
Jack Leonard "J. L." Warner , born Jacob Warner in London, Ontario, was a Canadian American film executive who was the president and driving force behind the Warner Bros. Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California...
to honor her contract, and Warner persuaded Vidor to shoot the scene as it was filmed.
Rand later wrote a note thanking Warner and the studio for allowing the preservation of the novel's "theme and spirit, without being asked to make bad taste concessions, such as a lesser studio would have demanded."
Production design
Rand's screenplay instructed "It is the style of Frank Lloyd Wright -- and only of Frank Lloyd Wright -- that must be taken as a model for Roark's buildings. This is extremely important to us, since we must make the audience admire Roark's buildings." According to Warner Bros., once it was known that the film had gone into production, the studio received letters from architects throughout the country suggesting designs; Wright himself turned down an offer to work on the film.The production design by Edward Carrere is strongly derived from an expressionist
German Expressionism
German Expressionism refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin, during the 1920s...
influence. The film's ending image depicting Roark standing atop the highest skyscraper in New York, which he designed and built, evokes Futurism
Futurism
Futurism was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy in the early 20th century.Futurism or futurist may refer to:* Afrofuturism, an African-American and African diaspora subculture* Cubo-Futurism* Ego-Futurism...
. During filming, Rand told Gerald Loeb that she didn't like the designs, and later wrote that Carrere had been trained as an architect, but had not practiced architecture. Rand described his designs as being copied from pictures of "horrible modernistic buildings", and judged them as "embarrassingly bad".
Music score
The film's score was composed by Max SteinerMax Steiner
Max Steiner was an Austrian composer of music for theatre productions and films. He later became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Trained by the great classical music composers Brahms and Mahler, he was one of the first composers who primarily wrote music for motion pictures, and as...
. Chris Matthew Sciabarra
Chris Matthew Sciabarra
Chris Matthew Sciabarra is a Brooklyn, New York-based political theorist. He is the author of three scholarly books—Ayn Rand: The Russian Radical; Marx, Hayek, and Utopia; and Total Freedom: Toward a Dialectical Libertarianism—as well several shorter works...
described Steiner as a "veritable film score architect [...] perhaps, the "fountainhead" of film music" in analyzing Steiner's appropriateness in composing the film's music, and says that Steiner's cues "immediately call to mind the story of Howard Roark."
In Sciabarra's article about the film's music, he quotes philosophy professor Glenn Alexander Magee, who says that Steiner's score suggested "a strong affinity for The Fountainhead [...] [it] perfectly conveys the feel of a Rand novel". Magee suggests that Steiner's music accents themes of redemption and renewal present in the story, providing insight into Roark's opposition, Francon's sense of life, and Wynand's flaw.
Excerpts from Steiner's score were included in RCA Victor's tribute to the composer, an album featuring the National Philharmonic Orchestra
National Philharmonic Orchestra
The National Philharmonic Orchestra was a British orchestra created exclusively for recording purposes. It was founded by RCA producer Charles Gerhardt and orchestra leader / contractor Sidney Sax due in part to the requirements of the Reader's Digest-History:...
conducted by Charles Gerhardt
Charles Gerhardt
Charles Gerhardt may refer to:*Charles Frédéric Gerhardt , French chemist*Charles H. Gerhardt , American general*Charles Gerhardt , American conductor...
and released on LP in 1973 and digitally remastered for CD.
Release and reception
Patricia Neal appeared on the NBCNBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
television series Hollywood Calling with Milton Berle
Milton Berle
Milton Berlinger , better known as Milton Berle, was an American comedian and actor. As the manic host of NBC's Texaco Star Theater , in 1948 he was the first major star of U.S. television and as such became known as Uncle Miltie and Mr...
to discuss their upcoming films, which included The Fountainhead and Berle's Always Leave Them Laughing
Always Leave Them Laughing
Always Leave Them Laughing is a 1949 film directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring Milton Berle and Virginia Mayo.-Cast:*Milton Berle as Kipling Cooper*Virginia Mayo as Nancy Eagen*Ruth Roman as Fay Washburn*Bert Lahr as Eddie Eagen...
. The film premiered at the Warners Hollywood theater. Warner Bros. erected two banks of bleachers on Hollywood Boulevard to accommodate fans that were expected to mob the premiere. Neal attended the premiere with Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas is an American stage and film actor, film producer and author. His popular films include Out of the Past , Champion , Ace in the Hole , The Bad and the Beautiful , Lust for Life , Paths of Glory , Gunfight at the O.K...
as her date, and the two signed autographs for fans. The Los Angeles Times wrote that the audience "strongly responded to the unusual elements in the production." After the film ended, Neal noticed that many people were avoiding her and turning their faces away, expect for Virginia Mayo
Virginia Mayo
Virginia Mayo was an American film actress.After a short career in vaudeville, Mayo progressed to films and during the 1940s established herself as a supporting player in such films as The Best Years of Our Lives and White Heat .Mayo remained an A-list actress into the mid-'50s, but then went...
, who approached Neal and exclaimed, "My, weren't you bad!" Once Cooper saw the film as a whole, he felt that he had not delivered the final speech as he should have. Compelled by the message of Rand's novel, Cooper and Neal let it be known publicly that they were having an affair, and the public knowledge of their relationship somewhat negatively impacted the film's box office.
The Fountainhead went on to gross $2.1 million, $400,000 less than its production budget. However, sales of Rand's novel increased as a result of public interest in the book, spurred by this film. Although Rand's screenplay was used with minimal alterations, she "disliked the movie from beginning to end," complaining about its editing, acting and other elements. As a result of this film, Rand said that she would never sell any of her novels to a film company that did not allow her the right to pick the director and screenwriter as well as edit the film, as she did not want to encounter the same production problems that occurred on this film.
The Fountainhead was panned by critics in its initial release. The Hollywood Reporter
The Hollywood Reporter
Formerly a daily trade magazine, The Hollywood Reporter re-launched in late 2010 as a unique hybrid publication serving the entertainment industry and a consumer audience...
wrote of the film, "Its characters are downright weird and there is no feeling of self-identification." The Los Angeles Times said that the film would not "catch the interest of what is known as the average movie audience -- whoever they may be nowadays." The Communist
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
-published Daily Worker
Daily Worker
The Daily Worker was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, some attempts were made to make it appear that the paper reflected a...
deemed The Fountainhead to be "an openly fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
movie". The trade magazine Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
called the film "cold, unemotional, loquacious [and] completely devoted to hammering home the theme that man's personal integrity stands above all law." The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
deemed the film to be "asinine and inept". Cue described it as "shoddy, bombastic nonsense". Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther
Bosley Crowther was a journalist and author who was film critic for The New York Times for 27 years. His reviews and articles helped shape the careers of actors, directors and screenwriters, though his reviews, at times, were unnecessarily mean...
, in his review for The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, called the film "wordy, involved and pretentious" and characterized Vidor's work as a "vast succession of turgid scenes."
Legacy
In recent years, The Fountainhead has been reappraised, and has a score of 82% on the review aggregate website Rotten TomatoesRotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
, which compiles reviews from a wide range of critics. Emanuel Levy
Emanuel Levy
Emanuel Levy is an American film critic and professor.-Life:Emanuel Levy began his studies at Tel Aviv University, where he received B.A. in sociology, anthropology and political science. He did graduate work in sociology, film, and culture studies at Columbia University, where he earned a Ph.D...
described the film as one of the few examples of an adaptation that is better than the book it was based on. Dave Kehr
Dave Kehr
Dave Kehr is an American film critic. A critic at the Chicago Reader and the Chicago Tribune for many years, he writes a weekly column for The New York Times on DVD releases, in addition to contributing occasional pieces on individual films or filmmakers.-Early life and education:Dave Kehr did...
said "King Vidor turned Ayn Rand's preposterous 'philosophical' novel into one of his finest and most personal films, mainly by pushing the phallic imagery so hard that it surpasses Rand's rightist diatribes." Architect David Rockwell
David Rockwell
David Rockwell is an American architect and designer, who is the founder and CEO of Rockwell Group, based in New York with satellite offices in Madrid and Dubai. Rockwell has long been fascinated with immersive environments.-Early life and education:...
, who saw the film when he visited New York City in 1964, has said that the film influenced his interest in architecture and design. Rockwell also stated that, at his university, many architecture students named their dogs Roark as a tribute to the protagonist of the novel and film.