Isn’t Gary Cooper Supposed to be Good, or Something?

Maybe it means that I’ve moved beyond the philosophical level of a high school sophomore, but The Fountainhead (1949) starring Gary Cooper as Howard Roark and Patricia Neal as Dominique Francon is just god awful. I should have known better when I saw that Ayn herself wrote the screenplay, but nothing prepared me for the endless exchanges of “Oh Howard you should conform to what the mob wants,” and “No, never! I’ve got my integrity!” My god, it was even complete with a courtroom diatribe that, unlike John Galt’s speech in Atlas Shrugged, couldn’t easily be skipped.

Gary Cooper was super disappointing in the movie, but was made to look passable by Patricia Neal’s turd of a performance. As much as we all love the “oh, I’m looking into the distance and speaking wistfully of times long gone” bit, it doesn’t really jive with the dynamic character she’s supposed to have.

All in all, the movie seemed exactly like Ayn would have wanted it — entirely didactic and completely unmoving.