The Fountainhead

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Audience Member By far the worst Cooper performance all time - the speech to the jury (which would never brought an acquittal in any remotely real setting) is such a complete thud you can probably almost hear the snores in the theater. The "bad guy" architects are all philosophy majors who want to impose the iron will of people with bad taste to keep anything "modern" or "uplifting " from ever being built and their little speeches trying to hammer this idea home go on and on. There are more than a few weird and uncomfortable moments between the two male leads also which could suggest sexual attraction between them but are side stepped as they continuously tell each other how swell they think they are. . I guess this is supposed to be a woman's story though (hard to tell most of the time) and the totally lunatic dramatic arch from crazed nobody-is-going-to--own-me gal to subservient worshiper of the noble construction idealist is completely wacko. The last scene where she goes up in an unfinished elevator through the unfinished tallest building in the world gloriously viewing her waving love interest at the summit is so lame and endless. The whole production produced more unintentional laughs for me than almost anything else I have viewed in the last decade. Rated 0.5/5 Stars •  Rated 0.5 out of 5 stars 09/03/25 Full Review Mike P Manipulative Ayn Rand story conflates an artist's need for independence with society's need to shuck off all safety nets and concepts of collectivism. The story fails at the concept level. It's also pretty boring. Rated 2.5/5 Stars •  Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/17/25 Full Review Steve D Despite the cast I found it rather dull. Rated 2/5 Stars •  Rated 2 out of 5 stars 01/07/24 Full Review David S The Fountainhead is one of my favorite books. This movie was like watching a synopsis. There's no way to compare it to the quality of the book. The movie is like 1/100th of 1% of the book. And yet, I gave it 3 stars because it was the best that could be done for a movie of around 2 hours from the 1940s. And I gave it 3 stars because the screenplay was written by Ayn Rand. If I were her I would not have allowed the movie to be made. But I'm not her. She must have had her reasons. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 10/14/23 Full Review Audience Member How can King Vidor have directed two of the all time stinkers in the same year? The Fountainhead and Beyond the Forest (the bomb that ended Bette Davis' tenure at Warners) are both turgid overwrought and overacted melodramas. Both however are strangely fascinating today. Based on the unreadable and pretentious novel by Ann Rynd, who also wrote the screenplay, the novel is boiled down to silly over the top dialogue which is mostly shouted between the characters. Patricia Neal, fresh from the Bette Davis eye rolling school, gives it her all. I was actually thinking Miss Davis would have really chewed the scenery in this potboiler, but she was a bit too old. Warners purchased the novel for Barbara Stanwyck, but by the time they got around to making it she was deemed too old. It's preposterous really, because Gary Cooper was older than Stanwyck and twice Neal's age! Cooper gives his usual stolid performance. It's strangely watchable and entertaining. Rated 3/5 Stars •  Rated 3 out of 5 stars 02/04/23 Full Review Audience Member anarchoindividualism Rated 5/5 Stars •  Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/13/23 Full Review Read all reviews

The Fountainhead

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