Thu 1 Nov 2007
The fundamental theme of this incredibly important film–that one mind is the only possible source of all ideas, judgments, creations and realistic comprehensions in the world–is among the most vital in all human thought, I assert. This is the best true film of ideas, one in which every character is motivated by his/her realism or lack thereof, in theentire canon of English-language film.
Only a handful of other filmmakers have ever tried to motivate their characters in thisworldly way; the weakness of English-language film and world film I suggest is the prevalence of totalitarianism–boss
over slaves–thinking and the consequent impoverishment of characters by writers differentiating men solely through their CATEGORICAL LEVEL character flaws and their defining of nothing on a CATEGORICALLY-scientific level. This film has three minor flaws I recognize–a rushed opening, the absence of a singleline when Howard Roark, the architect central character realizes why Dominique Francon has been attracted to him pursues her and does not say “tell me you don’t want me”; and the failure of an otherwise intelligent and focused Gary Cooper in the role of Roark to be able to read the crisis-point speech of powerful ideas on a classical-speech-and training level.
I say, as America’s leading thinker and writer, that these small drawbacks do not affect its greatness significantly. “The Fountainhead” has perhaps 40 percent more power than any other film ever made, I argue. The acting is generally among the best on film–by Patricia Neal, Ray Collins, Raymond Massey, Kent Smith, Robert Douglas, Henry Hull, Jerome Cowan, and John Doucette. King Vidor is arguably the greatest
director of all time; and here, in so many sequences, aided by Max Steiner powerful score, he achieves what i claim is a brilliant dramatic B/W film, many timesstronger than almost anything else ever even
attempted let alone realized.
Ayn Rand was right in her 1943 novel when she argued that the ancientmost quarrel known to man is that of the individual against the collective. I know, because I have lived Howard Roark’s life without Roger Enright. In a nation constitutionally imperiled by the presence of postmodernist reality-bashing gatekeeper tsars holding illicit power over every field of thought, endeavor and societal leadership, telling the
individual that he can have no rights under regulation, no life worth the
living and no permission to innovate, advance human greatness, be different or think in terms of science and not public-interest permitted false attitudes, theimportance of this film and of its lonely and abiding
message is magnified a thousand times.
The choice of the best film ever made is not a contest nor a me-says
and he-says cue for meaningless debate. That contest for me was over before it ever started.
Only “The Fountainhead” was ever written on an idea level about reality, about men fit to live on Earth and about the terms and the ideas they would need to embrace in order to be able to do so honestly and
amicably. Howard Roark is a symbolic figure for every man who wants to live life in liberty. And not to live under the dictatorship of bureaucratic, pseudo-religious, military, gangster or any other pragmatic tyrant(s).
If a restoration of the individual-based regulation-based American
constitution is ever achieved, then “The Fountainhead” I expect will swiftly be recognized as the greatest and most beautiful film ever made to date. If that renaissance of rights does not occur, then it will continue to be admired by the most deserving of minds–those who have earned (even if they do not receive) the liberty they alone can justly utilize and strive to earn anew with every day and every action they undertake as fountainheads of human greatness.
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