Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

The movie is made so realistic it has a lot of that WoW feeling at the right moments and never tooo over the top. the suspense is done so well and the emotion is felt. Very well put together with the music and all.

Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

I see this as a movie with Gary Cooper first, as a film second, and not at all as a philosophical treatise with which I must either agree or disagree before I can decide whether I enjoyed it. As stories go, it's pretty good. A guy wants to do his own thing -- but unfortunately, that is what modern architects do, and the results are dismaying, to say the least. Still, the film is deftly plotted, continuity is excellent, and the story moves right along to a smashing conclusion. Worth seeing.

Movie is faithful to the book since Ayn Rand wrote the screenplay. Deserves 10 for content. The miscasting of Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, and Raymond Massey prevented it from being the great movie it deserved to be.

Producer: Henry Blanke. Copyright 9 July 1949 by Warner Bros Pictures, Inc. A Warner Bros-First National picture. New York opening at the Strand: 8 July 1949. U.S. release: 2 July 1949. U.K. release: 28 November 1949. Australian release: 13 July 1951 (sic). 114 minutes.SYNOPSIS: An unconventional architect (somewhat similar to Frank Lloyd Wright) struggles to maintain his integrity in the face of opposition.FULL SYNOPSIS: Howard Roark, an idealistic and highly unorthodox architect with financial difficulties, takes a job in a stone quarry where he meets Dominique, a beautiful heiress. Mutual attraction soon becomes love, but Roark ends the affair abruptly and returns to New York when he is offered an architectural commission. Dominique, meanwhile, weds newspaper tycoon Gail Wynand, whose paper, "The Banner," wages a violent campaign against Roark's ideas. Soon, Peter Keating, a society architect, enlists Roark's aid in the design of a proposed public-housing project. Roark agrees, although he insists that, once his designs are accepted, nothing can be changed. Much later, after returning from a trip with Wynand, now his ally, Roark discovers innumerable changes in his original conception.NOTES: Although the film lost money everywhere else in the world, such was Coop's popularity in Australia, the picture came in 24th for 1951. COMMENT: Ayn Rand's best-seller was a cult classic of the 1950s and 60s. The film too was adopted by the cultists, despite the presence of Gary Cooper who, in the eyes of the corduroy brigade, had not made a "significant" movie since Along Came Jones (1945) — and that was a "lightweight"! And as for the 24 films Coop made after "The Fountainhead", only "High Noon" merited "serious consideration".What attracted the cultists of course were the features that always bring out the best (and worst) in undergraduate philosophizing: — a clear-cut, anti-Establishment message, delivered by off-beat but easy-to-comprehend (because thoroughly one- dimensional) characters in a setting where vice, particularly Lust (sexual lust, power-lust and egomania generally) is seemingly glorified. You look at all the films which cultists praise to the skies from W.C. Fields through "One Hour With You" to :Rocky Horror", all can be broken down to these three simple features.That's not to say, I don't like many of these films. At least half of them have lots of other factors going for them. "The Fountainhead" in fact is one of my favorites. Not because I endorse Miss Rand's philosophy (though it does give us something to think about), but because it's a particularly well-made movie.Blessed with some marvelous acting from a superb assembly of players (whether Cooper is miscast or not is an old argument that is now irrelevant), driving, pacey direction and magnificent production values, "The Fountainhead" is a powerfully entertaining testament to Hollywood craftsmanship at its finest. I especially admired the really striking sets and architectural wonders (including the sweeping special effect elevator ride at the climax), all brilliantly presented by ace photographer Robert Burks in attractive deep focus images. In fact "The Fountainhead" is so appealingly produced in all departments, you can forget the "message". Just sit back and enjoy the picture.OTHER VIEWS: "Man cannot survive except through his mind. But the mind is an attribute of the individual. There is no such thing as the collective brain. The man who thinks must think and act on his own. (The reasoning mind) cannot be subordinated to the needs, opinions, and wishes of others. It is not an object of sacrifice." This extract from the script goes to the heart of Ayn Rand's philosophy, which I have no doubt she would claim was even more relevant today. Do you agree?AVAILABLE on an excellent Warner DVD.

The Fountainhead (1949) was released by Warner Bros. and is based on author Ayn Rand's literary masterpiece of the same name. The film stars film legend Gary Cooper as headstrong architect Howard Roark, Patricia Neal as idealist Dominique Francon, and Raymond Massey as newspaper magnate Gail Wynand. Directed by King Vidor and scored by Max Steiner, The Fountainhead is a beautiful example of Hollywood at its finest. It illustrates the cut-throat reality of real estate, architecture, and the public's insatiable appetite for tradition and otherwise mundane structures that populate their city and suburban spaces. The film begins by depicting Roark's undeserved expulsion from university. His dean proclaims him too unique and forward-thinking for the average man's traditional sensibilities and declares that Roark won't amount to much if he sticks to architecture as a profession. Roark's designs are ahead of their time: presenting sleek, unblemished lines and curves on both residential and commercial buildings that any other architect would stick Grecian accents on before calling it a day. The public and the community's builders cannot see past Roark's visionary designs to recognize the greatness and genius that undulates within each one.Howard Roark quickly becomes a starving artist because he refuses to adapt his designs to fit the mob's consensus. No one will hire him and anyone who does consider commissioning him for a job attempts to re-work his plans and incorporate more traditional accents and flourishes onto his buildings. Roark stands firm and refuses to alter his designs despite the fact this means that he is kissing his career as a successful architect goodbye. After having gone nearly two years without a single job, Roark is forced to accept a position working in a granite quarry, drilling into vast white sheets of marble to make a living. The work is laborious, tedious, and overwhelmingly exhausting, yet Roark remains stalwart and committed to performing his task to the best of his abilities. Gary Cooper excelled at playing righteous characters with strong, determined backbones and he is completely mesmerizing in the role of Howard Roark in The Fountainhead.Dominique Francon (Neal) is a woman determined not to become a slave to any man or object. She is flawed, certainly, but her hesitancy to belong to any one person rings true to today's feminists and gender equality seekers. She is just as headstrong and stubborn as Howard Roark is and it's only natural that the two characters are immediately drawn to each other after spotting one another at the granite quarry. The relationship between Howard and Dominique is sultry yet damaged, tender yet violent. Dominique is a spoiled socialite but her one redeeming quality is that she recognizes talent and stays true and loyal to it as she does when she is introduced to Roark's designs and work ethic. Once Roark gets back on his feet again and is commissioned to design a luxury high-rise apartment tower in the city, his modern designs are ridiculed not by the builder who sought Roark out specifically for his architectural prowess, but by the public and their destructive criticism is egged on by one of the city's most prominent newspapers, The Banner, which is owned by Gail Wynand (Massey).Lambasted by the public, the press, and his fellow architects, Roark perseveres with his modern designs and, once completed, the apartment tower is hailed as being a truly magnificent and original piece of architecture. His critics are silenced — temporarily — and his work quickly gains popularity.Unfortunately, any man's (or woman's) climb to the top of his or her profession is rarely an easy one. The way up is paved with rejection, ridicule, dangerous temptations, and ill will — all of this causes Howard Roark, no matter how strong of a constitution he has, to stumble. His pride and his unwillingness to change result in a total professional upheaval and Roark is forced to defend himself in court, risking not only his livelihood but his professional reputation as well. Still, through thick and thin, Dominique Francon remains a constant fixture in Roark's life, defending him to the last and sticking by him in his darkest hour. She has unwittingly become a slave — the very thing she was determined to avoid — and she discovers that there is nowhere she'd rather be than in the arms of Howard Roark.The Fountainhead is a film full of elitism, pride, vanity, and defeatist attitudes. It is also one of the most beautifully shot classic black and white films I've ever seen! Its cinematography and set design hearkens back to the German expressionist masterpiece Metropolis (1927) in which the world is broken into two social classes: the workers and the elite. The Fountainhead's cinematography has an almost film noir quality about it; plenty of smoke, hard edges and clean angles, shadowy spaces, and awesomely cropped longshots. Lightness and darkness fight for screen time here and the victor is a marvellous visual blend of hard and soft modern film celluloid.The only aspect of the film that I had a slight problem with was the evident lack of chemistry between the two romantic leads (Cooper and Neal). They each portrayed their characters well, but that special, essential spark and fire was missing from the finished version of the film. Perhaps the studio, producers, and director (King Vidor) were well aware of this issue because, though Cooper and Neal were two of the story's major characters, they didn't share a large amount of screen time. Rather, the majority of their scenes were filmed separately.http://juliekinnear.com/blogs/the-fountainhead-movie