The Fountainhead **** (1949, Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, Raymond Massey, Kent Smith, Robert Douglas, Henry Hull, Ray Collins) – Classic Movie Review 4572

Director King Vidor’s 1949 drama is an ambitious and far-reaching though fruity, muddled and rambling film of Ayn Rand’s famous novel. The Fountainhead stars an oddly cast, haggard-looking Gary Cooper, who gives a solid enough performance but seems uncomfortable as Howard Roark, an upright, uncompromising architect confronting the money men in the battle for his own individualism and integrity.

The other stars turn in amusingly over-the-top performances: Patricia Neal as an independent woman Dominique Francon striding in jodhpurs and whip with the hots for Cooper, Robert Douglas as a decadent man named Ellsworth M Toohey sporting cigarette holder while trying to battle the hero, and Raymond Massey as their employer Gail Wynand, a ruthless self-made press baron initially out to destroy Cooper.

There is ornate, heavily meaningful direction by Vidor, who pushes the weird material to the limit, mixing the passionate love affair with some rightist ideas to gay abandon. It is entertaining enough as soap opera, though worrying (if interesting) as an exploration of ideas about art, money and society. And certainly it could be possible to like or admire this movie quite a lot. Indeed it has a bit of a cult reputation, and repays careful viewing and respect. But it cannot get round the fact that both main characters seem wilfully destructive and infuriating – and you are meant to like them!

The architect character is generally believed to be based on famed Frank Lloyd Wright, who was intended to design the film’s sets until the Warner Bros studio boss Jack Warner pronounced him ‘unsuitable’, though this might well have had something to do with the $250,000 fee Wright demanded. The soupy Max Steiner score is very out of place.

Also in the cast are Kent Smith, Henry Hull, Ray Collins, Moroni Olsen, Jerome Cowan, Paul Harvey, Thurston Hall, Harry Woods, Paul Stanton, Bob Alden, Tristram Coffin, Roy Gordon, Isabel Withers, Almira Sessions, Tito Vuolo, William Haade, Harlan Warde, Dorothy Christy, Jonathan Hale, Frank Wilcox, Douglas Kennedy, Pierre Watkin, Selmer Jackson, John Doucette and John Alvin.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 4572

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