The Fountainhead

The architect Howard Roark would rather dynamite his own building than let anyone touch the design. His defence at the trial is not a defence of architecture but a statement of a worldview. The film is not interested in buildings. It is interested in compromise. For Roark, compromising is worse than not working at all. The form says the same thing visually. King Vidor builds his compositions from low angles, hard shadows and vertical lines that dwarf the people standing in them. Feeling is delivered through space more than through dialogue. The most interesting thing about the film is the condition under which the script was written. In 1943 Warner Brothers paid $50,000 for the rights and for Ayn Rand to write the screenplay, and Rand had a clause put in guaranteeing that not one line of dialogue would be removed. According to King Vidor, if a line was to be changed on set, Rand wanted to be telephoned and summoned to the studio. She turned her own hero's refusal to compromise into a contract term. Gary Cooper plays Roark, Patricia Neal plays Dominique. The affair that began between them during production lasted two years, and Cooper was married. The budget was $2.375 million and the film took $3 million. Who it is for: viewers who love the look of forties studio melodrama and are curious about a film of ideas. Who it is not for: anyone who wants characters to talk like people. The lines here are written as manifesto and played that way.