Sometime between when I started writing reviews for AllMovieGuide in late 2000 and when I started keeping track of the order of my viewings in March of 2002, I watched and reviewed King Vidor's The Fountainhead -- or, more to the point, Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead. It looks like it must have been July of 2001, as it sits next to the movie High Heels and Low Lifes on my running list of all the movies I reviewed for AllMovie, and I watched and reviewed the latter film not long after its theatrical release that month.The date I saw The Fountainhead doesn't matter, except in the following way: I didn't really understand who Ayn Rand was when I saw it. Hers was a name I had heard, but I had no idea that she was a hero to the modern conservative movement, with her endless pontificating about the exceptionalism of the individual and her scornful disdain for any virtues that resembled socialism.
As the political contentiousness between the right and the left has come into sharper focus in the nearly 20 years since then, and as I have become more aware of it personally, I of course do know who Ayn Rand is now.
Which has made it really uncomfortable for me to reconcile how much I liked The Fountainhead.
I have occasion to think about the movie periodically, as I do about any movie in the upper echelons of my Flickchart rankings. Because of the way I rank movies on Flickchart -- I won't get into that now -- the movies that are higher up tend to come up for duels more often. The Fountainhead is currently my #338, so it comes up with some regularity.
Every time I duel it -- usually victoriously -- I have occasion to wonder why it was that I felt myself so taken in by philosophies that I fundamentally abhor.
So the good news is, I'm still a free thinker. I have not, to this point, even subconsciously penalized The Fountainhead because I know Rand wrote it. She didn't only write the book, she wrote its adaptation for the big screen. Its spot at #338 still puts it in the 93rd percentile of all 5150 movies I have ranked on Flickchart. (Which is about 400 fewer than I've seen -- I'm still catching up following a long period of inactivity.)
The bad news is, I liked -- nay, loved -- this movie, and I don't know why.
Tuesday night, it was time to find out.
If you aren't familiar with The Fountainhead -- and for your sake, unless you've seen the movie, I hope you aren't -- it concerns Howard Roark (Gary Cooper), an iconoclastic architect trying to make his name in the architectural world. His designs are sleek and modern, which means they butt up against the more classical tastes of the masses. In fact, so eager to please the masses are those who commission new buildings, no one wants to hire Roark for fear of his unwillingness to conform to the public preferences. Ever a man of principle, Roark will only accept an assignment if he can do it his way -- even taking on work as a day laborer when he becomes financially destitute, if the alternative is to design a building where his vision is compromised.
At the time I saw The Fountainhead, I probably thought "Good on him." I didn't recognize these themes as an encoded -- or not even very encoded -- celebration of the superior individual whose judgements are unassailable, especially in contrast to the plebeian mediocrity of the masses. I just thought "Yeah, an artist shouldn't compromise himself!"
Maybe that's true of an artist, but it's not true of a person, particularly a person in the political arena. Compromise is the foundation for sane politics. When you have no compromise, you get Donald Trump.
On this viewing, what Rand was telling the world was simply inescapable to me.
It feels like nearly every line of dialogue is some flat-footed statement of political philosophy, of downright dogma. (The political philosophy Rand founded, Objectivism, is based on a rejection of collectivism in any form, which is why libertarians like her so much.) The villains in this piece are members of the media, either a newspaper owner (Raymond Massey) or his primary architectural columnist (Robert Douglas), who believes in a brand of conformity that is almost fascistic. Here are some choice lines I scribbled down. On the side of Rand's objectivist view of the world:
"I want nothing, I expect nothing, I depend on nothing."
"I'm pleading for man's achievement. I'm pleading for greatness."
"They hate you for the greatness of your achievement."
"The man who works for others without payment is a slave."
"I don't give or ask for help."
That last I find particularly stunning, and indeed, Rand's philosophy rejected the value of charity and philanthropy. It's every capitalist asshole for himself.
Or herself. Next to Roark there is his love interest, Dominique Francon (Patricia Neal), who spouts about half the above lines. She's his equal in exceptional individualism. You'd say Rand earns points for at least not being sexist, but, nah.
Oh, and here are some choice nuggets from her socialist villains:
"Why take chances when you can stay in the middle?"
"You will take your spectacular talent and make it subservient to the tastes of the masses."
It's an old trick to put lines of dialogue in your enemy's mouths that are patently ridiculous, and have them speak them as though they are not.
But as you will see, even Roark's enemies admit his "spectacular talent." In the purest sign of the type of self-regard that we now think of as Trumpian, every character in this movie falls all over themselves telling Roark how brilliant he is -- it's either the reason they love him or the reason they hate him. But no one will disagree that he is an "exceptional person."
In fact, Roark never makes a single misstep in the movie, according to his own political philosophies anyway. He never compromises and therefore he never does something for which he can later feel sorry. On a basic narrative level, it's extremely dull when your protagonist has nothing to learn and does nothing wrong.
The film also continues to beat us over the head with the respect it has for people who brought themselves up from nothing. All the characters in this film who we're supposed to like are self-made men (or women); all the sniveling, milquetoast weaklings never had to earn anything.
Well, I guess there is one way this philosophy differs from that of Donald Trump.
I squinted really hard here to find what must have drawn me to the movie at the time. I had to go back to my original review to see what it was. Here are some lines from that review:
"Rand's talky philosophies, which dominate the film for better or worse, invite endless contemplation about what it means to be a trendsetter and to protect the purity of one's artistic endeavors, especially in a world eager to quash those who challenge the status quo."
"Everything in The Fountainhead is meaty with thematic import, solidified by the acting and King Vidor's directing, which earns kudos for keeping the audience glued to a nearly two-hour movie that's mostly dialogue."
If I remember correctly, at the time I think I was unduly influenced by the fact that the film is about architecture. I'm not sure I've seen a movie, before or since, that is so centrally focused on architecture, excepting maybe Columbus from a couple years ago. What I should have realized, and what I realize now with ultimate clarity, is that it didn't matter what the subject of the movie was. It's just the armature on which to drape Rand's beliefs, and it's not done nearly so deftly as I once thought.
It's temping to think of King Vidor as an innocent bystander in all this. As far as I can ascertain, he was just a regular working director in Hollywood who had no political bent to his choices. He did have staggering longevity to his career, making nearly 100 films of varying length from 1913 to 1980, though that last might be something different, as it was the first film listed in his filmography since 1964 and only two years before he died at age 88.
But Vidor does play his role in how he directs and shoots Cooper. I don't consider Cooper to have much range and this is a pretty similar performance to others I've seen him give, but there's a certain unapologetic quality to him that continues to enforce his superiority as a specimen of the human race. That he's permitted to address the court himself, without legal representation, in a climactic courtroom scene -- one where he absolutely should be found guilty, but isn't -- may be straight out of Rand's book and script. But I suspect Vidor had something to do with the choice to shoot him standing triumphantly atop the skyscraper he's making, which is the film's final shot, his shirt flapping in the breeze like some kind of conservative victory flag.
Speaking of directors and their relationship to the material, in researching this piece I just noticed that there has been announced a second adaptation of The Fountainhead, this time helmed by Zack Snyder. Given the current climate and how Rand's work is viewed now, there could be none of the kind of accidental association with the material that may have described Vidor's involvement. I wonder if this means that Snyder is a strong believer in this stuff. You could argue that how he portrays Superman would get Rand's approval.
I'm not sure if I will push The Fountainhead downward in my Flickchart rankings through a forcible re-ranking, or just allow it to steadily sink over time as it loses more duels.
But I can definitely say it is not my 338th favorite movie of all time.
Phew.
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