Just finished reading “The Fountainhead.” I’ve been wanting to read it for years, to see if it was as much of a Freudian mess as the movie (what with Gary Cooper and his giant drill). As much as I was hoping to completely hate it, there were bits of it between the pages and pages of crap that I really liked. There was a scene between Roark and Mallory that I found really touching, for example. Overall though I could’ve done without about 300-400 of the 715 pages that preceded Rand’s entire point, Roark’s “creators create, parasites destroy” courtroom speech.
And I don’t care what anyone says, Gaul Wynand was a big old homo.
Nah. He was a variant on William Randolph Hearst, just as Citizen Kane was. In fact, if you watch Citizen Kane (as well as RKO 182, a docudrama about the filming of Citizen Kane), it becomes even clearer that Rand and Orson Wells were drawing from a common source.
I wrote about the similarities between the Howard Roark character and his real-life inspiration Frank Lloyd Wright, and more, in this post from two years ago (posting #27).
As for the artistic merits of the Ayn Rand novel and the King Vidor-directed film adaptation, for me they remain a queasy mixture of the brilliantly engaging and the cringe-inducing. On the plus side are her unusual subject matter and characters (architecture and psychologically tormented New York media elites and their sadomasochistic relationships), her flair for spectacular, genre-tinged plotting (Roark’s blowing up his own buildings and his trial), and her uniquely philosophical theme (the rights and powers of the individual as pitted against conformity, oppression, and persecution from colleagues, the media, and the government). On the negative side are some of the particular qualities of her writing style – the awkward and repetitive dialogue, by turns expository and didactic (even to the point of marathon speechifying), the one-dimensionality of many of the characters (such as the Snidely Whiplash-like Ellsworth Toohey), and the eerie unreality of much of what passes for human relationships (of all types).
IIRC, during the filming of Star Wars, Harrison Ford supposedly said to George Lucas something like “you can type up this shit, George, but you sure as hell can’t say it.” Well, I got the same impression from much of the dialogue from The Fountainhead, especially the film version, which, due to its constraints and limitations as a medium, is weighted towards the horrible dialogue and spectacular story elements at the relative expense of the quiet passages and incidental details, often about architecture in practice or as a profession, which made the novel a worthwhile (if flawed) experience. The novel, at least, turned me on to FLW and to architecture in general; the film by itself could never have done that.
I never saw the movie, but The Fountainhead was an interesting read IMHO. I like Atlas Shrugged better, but there was some interesting ideas in Fountainhead and over all I found the book pretty good. I have to agree with the OP that The Speech™ was a bit over blown and repetative (it was like the A is A speech in Atlas Shrugged). Also, the whole idea that rape is the way to actually get the girl is kind of…well, bizarre IMHO. Some of the characters are pretty one dimensional as well.
Over all though I liked the book and am planning on getting the unabridged audio cassetts of it when it comes back to my library…as I did with Atlas Shrugged a few months ago…and re-aquainting myself with some good old fashioned individuals fighting against mindless communism/socialism and comformity of the masses.
YMMV and I’m sure it does for most about Rands books.
On reflection, I found it interesting that it was supposed to be really shocking in the novel for Dominique to divorce Peter to marry Wynand, and then divorce Wynand to marry Roark. The film, presumably bound by the Hays code or similar bullshit policies, has her merely breaking off an engagement with Peter and her marriage to Wynand ends with his suicide, a plot twist deliberately not appearing in the novel.
For all Rand’s talk about never compromising creative integrity, she really let King Vidor stomp all over her story.
And I even posted to that thread. Good to know my opinions of the movie have stayed calcified since then. Ayn would be proud. I hope people start fighting in this thread too, except a couple of the culprits from the last one have either been banned or haven’t re-upped.
I can’t say as I know much about FLW (which living in Wisconsin may be a violation of state statute or something) except that I think the Monona Terrace, or as I call it, the Monona Terror, is a fugly building that ruined the shoreline. So I can’t really speak to any similarities between HR and FLW that you pointed out. From an architectural standpoint did FLW share HR’s demands for total control over his ideas?
Yeah, I was quite amused by that as well. Obviously as the screenwriter she did all she could to keep her story intact but the collective creaitve process and the Production Code conspired to force changes. Which, seeing as how I love irony, I enjoyed very much.
As far as GW being a WRH variant, that’s fine and dandy but I still say he’s a big old homo. For all his protestations of being in love with Dominique, it’s clear he was as much or more in love with HR.
One of the worst films ever made, IMO. How it hasn’t been remade is a mistery to me. An HBO miniseries would be great (we’d ge to see Dominique naked!!).
As for the love between GW and HR, you have to understand how Ayn’s mind works. He ideal man is so perfect that everyone who isn’t a second-hander must be head over heels in love with the guy. But it isn’t sexual. GW is in love with what he knows he should have been himself.
John Mace
Agreed. “Fountainhead” was really bad. I also thought Gary Cooper as the architect was way beyond his acting ability. It was as if he were playing the archetypal Gary Cooper role:
“Yup, I can’t compromise my architectural principles. Shucks.” [modestly kicking his shoe in the dirt]
If it is remade, who will play the Gary Cooper role? Carrot Top?
I think “variant” is stretching it. Wynand is a self-made man from Hell’s Kitchen; Kane (like the real-life Hearst) grew up with inherited wealth. That’s a really, really big difference.
Yeah, but about those “interesting ideas” . . . the basic political message in Atlas Shrugged is that the whole range of socialist, communist, and progressive movements in general (exemplified by Toohey) were all about, not fighting against the bourgeoisie to elevate the proletariat, but fighting against excellence to elevate mediocrity. Toohey is a man with no real creative talents who hates everyone so gifted; he hangs out with, and promotes, a group of “individualist” artists who are, indeed, nonconformists, but also completely mediocre; he dedicates himself to spoil all the works of Roarke (e.g., his Temple, which is ruined with superfluous add-ons) because he recognizes Roarke as a true creative genius. Now, you could make a lot of valid criticisms of socialism/communism/etc., but that ain’t one of 'em! :dubious:
I thought so too, but after reading the book I found Roark to have such a flattened affect most of the time that Cooper’s acting was spot-on. HR rarely shows any sort of violent emotion in the book. He argues his positions but he doesn’t express them angrily. There’s the scene I mentioned earlier with Mallory (and if you consider his first time with Dominique to be rape and you consider rape to come from anger, there’s that) but beyond that he pretty much stays outwardly calm. Mallory’s not in the movie and the scene with Dominique is certainly not called rape, so there aren’t a lot of emotional high notes that Cooper needed to hit.
Who to cast in a remake? It kind of cries out for unknown quantities in the major roles. OTTOMH I can’t think of a single person in the current crop of big names who’d fit well in any of the major roles. Maybe someone like David Hyde Pierce as Toohey.
BTW, HR does show a lot of emotion-- when he’s dealing with his work. Cooper was just dead. Patricial Neal was pretty good, and the guy who played Wynand seemed physically too small. Keating was cast well.
I also found the character of Roarke as “man as he should be” (so described in Rand’s afterword) to fall utterly flat, on those terms. Keating is a man who cares about architecture only because it gives him the chance to be a star, i.e., makes him look good in the eyes of others – and he can see himself only through his reflections in his admirers’ eyes. Roarke is the opposite extreme – not only doesn’t he give a shit about what other people think of him, he doesn’t give a shit about other people at all. The architecture-school lecture, early in the book, about an architect’s duty to “serve the client” first and foremost is included only for the sake of refuting that whole way of thinking. Roarke knows very well that he knows better than his prospective clients – knows, in particular, that what they think they want in a building usually derives from their trying to live up to the way they think society perceives/defines them – and he usually won’t give them what they want, because it would violate his artistic integrity. But what’s his alternative? Roarke, it appears, is a man so devoted to Architecture for Architecture’s Sake that he would be perfectly content, given the funding, to put up a building in the Gobi Desert, never to be used or even seen by anyone. Unlike the “selfless man” Keating, Roarke has a “self,” but there appears to be very little in it; he’s just as much an empty shell as Keating, only in a different way.
I will give Rand props for making Roarke an architect. No other field of creative endeavor would have served the purpose. Architecture is an obvious metaphor for any kind of effort to design or build human society. Unlike say, painting, architects produce things everybody has to live with. Architecture is the queen of arts – it draws from and influences everything else. It embodies esthetic but also functional principles. Every building reflects certain assumptions about history, tradition and society.
But I wonder if Rand ever noticed that the most distinctly Roarkian-modernist buildings put up in her lifetime were built by the Nazis and the Communists?
I never could make any sense of the “rape by engraved invitation” (as Rand later defended it) scene, as it was in the book. Dominique’s attraction to Roarke is at least consistent with her ordained role as the Priestess of the True Man (I’m getting that description, again, from Rand’s afterword – and we see it played out even more starkly in the scene where she poses for the central statue in Roarke’s Temple – she can strike the proper pose only when gazing directly at Roarke). But what exactly is his attraction to her? He seems to be above ordinary human emotions such as love, lust, and even esthetic appreciation of female beauty. Without those, what’s left? Why would he rape her? Why would he marry her? Why would he look at her (or any woman) twice? All I can gather is that they come together because it is an inevitable, irresistible (but not in any mystical Shavian “life force” sense) working-out of their respective roles as God and Worshipper.
