I agree with Jackson Arn that there is plenty to enjoy about The Fountainhead (1949). However, I’d sooner work in a New England quarry than say that the film “rips.” I saw it at Anthology Film Archives as part of the launch for film quarterly Narrow Margin last summer. The postscreening discussion between editors Benjamin Crais and Hicham Awad and French critic and cult filmmaker Luc Moullet (one of the last living figures of the Nouvelle Vague, in town for a career retrospective at Lincoln Center) meandered, though Moullet was sharp when he said, “The Fountainhead is a testament to the figure of the architect in cinema but also a parable for what was happening in the world of cinema.” With inflexible determination, director King Vidor cut ties with studio executives whom he’d felt had sullied his vision. (Previously, MGM cut thirty minutes from 1944’s An American Romance against his wishes.)
In this direct way, Moullet exceeds Arn’s infantilizing reappraisal of a scandalous project such as Rand’s, which primarily treats the movie as a zany-wacky dip of libertarian s…
