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 schlock. Yes, Patricia Neal’s enunciation is an insane slice of antiquated Hollywood acting contrasted by the stone-faced parody of Gary Cooper’s performance, but the film is clearly more than just absurd. Rand’s cultural legacy doesn’t need to be reconsidered to “save” Vidor’s Fountainhead—it’s a work worth celebrating on its own merits.
Arn’s extended commentary on the film’s failed architecture is wasted on the premise that the film’s architecture is worth considering in the first place. Taking into account industry reception in a nearly five-thousand-word essay within a magazine called New York Review of Architecture is sensible. Come on, though: Roark the architect—and precisely not his designs—is the main event. His commanding presence as a profound asshole in the tapestry of assholes is the part of the zhuzh.
I hope I’m not coming off too pedantic. I note all of this in good faith to incite more cinephilic tendencies in NYRA and beyond. While I’d consider myself a person with a sense of humor (the first to make a joke!), “At Last, No Shrugs” struck me as disservice to The Fountainhead.