I saw this movie on TV back in the 1970s and even then I had tuned in half-way through. It inspired me to read the novel. I then saw the movie in it's entirety.
Gary Cooper and Raymond Massey are good in their parts but each is at least 10 years too old. Cooper may not have fully understood his part either. Gregory Peck should have been cast as Roark and Robert Ryan as Wynand.
Patricia Neal is perfect, dead-on as Dominique. She projects intelligence (as she always has in her career) as well as stunning good looks.
There's much in the novel that was left out, but the photography is lovely and the pacing is good.
The biggest flaw is the casting if Robert Douglas as Toohey. He plays Toohey like a blatantly repellent villain in an Errol Flynn swashbuckler. I kept expecting him to whip out a sword and run Gary Cooper through. In the novel, Toohey is outwardly charismatic and people are drawn to him. I'd love to have seen Orson Welles or Claude Rains in the part.
To those people who say that this movie glorifies selfishness; it does. So what? Aren't we all motivated by selfishness? You think the guy that works 2 jobs 80 hours a week does it so he'll have more money to give to charity or to pay in taxes? Read "The Fountainhead" and Rand's follow-up novel "Atlas Shrugged" before you make up your mind about Rand's philosophy.
This movie and the novel are not about architecture any more than Moby Dick is about whaling.
A previous poster says that unfettered capitalism is like the Russian Mafia. Actually, it's not. The Russian Mafia doesn't build anything, create anything, invent anything. That post however, is a good example of Socialist - Leftist thinking.
Gary Cooper and Raymond Massey are good in their parts but each is at least 10 years too old. Cooper may not have fully understood his part either. Gregory Peck should have been cast as Roark and Robert Ryan as Wynand.
Patricia Neal is perfect, dead-on as Dominique. She projects intelligence (as she always has in her career) as well as stunning good looks.
There's much in the novel that was left out, but the photography is lovely and the pacing is good.
The biggest flaw is the casting if Robert Douglas as Toohey. He plays Toohey like a blatantly repellent villain in an Errol Flynn swashbuckler. I kept expecting him to whip out a sword and run Gary Cooper through. In the novel, Toohey is outwardly charismatic and people are drawn to him. I'd love to have seen Orson Welles or Claude Rains in the part.
To those people who say that this movie glorifies selfishness; it does. So what? Aren't we all motivated by selfishness? You think the guy that works 2 jobs 80 hours a week does it so he'll have more money to give to charity or to pay in taxes? Read "The Fountainhead" and Rand's follow-up novel "Atlas Shrugged" before you make up your mind about Rand's philosophy.
This movie and the novel are not about architecture any more than Moby Dick is about whaling.
A previous poster says that unfettered capitalism is like the Russian Mafia. Actually, it's not. The Russian Mafia doesn't build anything, create anything, invent anything. That post however, is a good example of Socialist - Leftist thinking.