Rand's ideas ignore gray areas & humanity's inherent emotionalism, but it's easy 2 find such an unsual tale,& hero, interesting. Roarke's a solitary, humorless fort of integrity who's also fortunately possessed of both a groundbreaking genius & the ability 2 ALWAYS b right. True, he bears no resemblance 2 any human in history but he makes 4 a heck of a superhero & its a kick 2 watch him & the equally supercilious Dominique stride the earth like Gods, belittling the rest of us by simply existing

Terrible writing. As we are being CONSTANTLY reminded that Roark is too genius and original for the mediocre sheeple, the dialogue could not possibly more literal or didactic. It's mind-bogglingly awful and laughable. I wouldn't even mind that the movie's themes are so offensive, if they were at least conveyed with some degree of subtlety. King Vidor's direction actually is pretty good in terms of visual stylization, but it's not nearly enough to save this steaming pile of horseshit.

So bad it's good, so strangely fascinating, Ayn Rand was obviously insane

815

"75? Really? This man is really into that thinking." Absolutely not, but this movie is so convinced with its message that it didn't even try to beautify it. It's that good? Yeah, it makes it self-parodic of the idea. And can be used for both, people so individualist and liberalist won't see the absurds, and people who believes in collectiveness and team-work can watch it as a fun parody. It's Poe's Law. And if you know Rand's fight to protect this easy to improve script, even more laughs.

#845

The flat dialogue and calm characters ensure that nothing distracts a story that's well-calculated to shock.

I generally despise Rand, and anything associated with her, but this was not bad. The acting was solid, and even though the script sucked, I wanted to know what fate was in store for the characters. Not because I sympathized with them, but because I disliked all of the characters so much that I hoped communists would invade and rape whichever female character Rand wrote herself into in this piece.

This movie has smoldering sexual themes. Both Patricia Neal and Gary Cooper give the best performances of their careers. Uses beautiful architecture as a theme and as part of the message. Heavy on a controversial philosophical point of view. I find a movie from that era so firmly focused on philosophy unusual and very enjoyable.

# 785

The Fountainhead is filled with simplistic, cartoonish characters dribbling out ham-fisted, didactic dialogue that even a six year-old child would find insultingly condescending. But once it finally gets into the story this becomes less painful and the film is actually watchable. Still, it's like a bad moralizing Christian-movie except here the philosophy of Ayn Rand is preached. It might have worked if Rand had compromised on some aspects of her script and placed certain events... oh wait.

814

This movie gets flamed a lot, probably more so than any old movie this side of _Plan 9 from Outer Space_. I found the book too hard to digest, but I rather like this movie. Excuse the heck outta me :-)

The only redeeming aspect of this movie is that it stars Gary Cooper. I understand the underlying issues of this movie, but, A) It was boring, B) I hate Ayn Rand.

Moral of the story: If your ideology is challenged, blow up a building.

a ruthlessly terrible hodgepodge of short shots consisting of bad acting and/or pointless scenes. i blame this on ayn rand's obvious ineptitude as a writer, and king vidor's strange ability to make every single actor speak as if they were talking robots unaware of other robots being in the shot. perhaps if ayn rand didn't spend so much time preaching to the audience this movie wouldnt be so terrible no one could ever take her views in it seriously.