The Fountainhead (1949)

The only thing the name Ayn Rand conjures up in my mind is the image of a Republican kid who considers himself an intellectual. From what I've heard about Rand, she seems a very extreme author, famous more for her freedom-loving ideas than her literary style. But you don't have to align with the intellectual world of Ayn Rand to be confused by The Fountainhead (dir. King Vidor). It's just such a strange film. The story, of course, revolves around the way freedom, individuality and creativity stands against collectivity and the People. The main character is an architect who designs buildings which are not always popular among the common people. His buildings are too "modern" for the common man, whose taste in this film is represented as a hodgepodge of different classicist styles. The architect struggles and struggles. Unable to find any clients, he works as a laborer in a quarry. There, he meets a journalists who admires his work as an architect. In a long, strange scene, we see their first encounter. For a good five minutes, the camera cuts from the architect's laboring, swelling muscles to the gaze of the journalist. The music of drills and machines embellish this romantic scene. After this follows scenes in which the journalist tries to lure the architect into her bed, but he mocks her, then rapes her. The rape scene is done in a way to let us believe that it is the journalist's desire to be raped. The story continues along two threads, that of the "romantic" windings of the relationships of the two characters, and the struggle of Roark the architect to get through with a new grand project in a way that in no way compromises his genious. We learn what happens when the great Artist is confronted with compromises from greedy and collectivistic businessmen. We also learn that a great Artist's eloquence can acquit him from the crime of having blown up a building.

The strangest aspect of the film is the last scene, which could without much alteration work as a part of any Riefenstahl film during the Nazi era. It is an understatement to say that Fountainhead is pompous. It is so over the top that it almost becomes funny. The film's notion of freedom and creativity is so bizarre that it is hard to connect it with the usual idea about market individualism. I think it is hard to find a film that is more hostile to "society" (which is here tantamount to vulgarity) - the basic premise of the story is that there are individuals whose ideas should not be compromised in any way by what other people may want or need. It is not evident what the conclusion is. A form of aristocracy perhaps, where some people are allowed the space for action and limitless rights (to blow up ugly things, for example), whereas others are doomed to laboring.  -- Even though this is a through-and-through crazy film, somehow, it was interesting to watch it.