Worst Movie Ever


In 1949, I was almost thrown out of a theater for fits of laughter while watching the drama of an incorruptible architect who blows up a housing project because someone added gingerbread to his design.

The movie was “The Fountainhead,” based on an Ayn Rand novel with a script by the author, that set new records for pretentious dialogue and pompous self-assertion.

This comes to mind because Alan Greenspan, whose memoirs emerge tomorrow, was once a disciple of Rand’s Objectivism, prompting a New York Times article yesterday under the heading, “Ayn Rand’s Literature of Capitalism.”

Over half a century, the philosophy that was heartily derided by both the left and right has become an inspiration for those who need justification for extreme selfishness and looking down at the rest of humanity as “looters” and “moochers.” Money, according to the Rand scripture in the turgid 1200-page novel, “Atlas Shrugged,” is the root of all good.

Among Rand’s moneyed admirers are Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, who have been threatening for years to make a movie of “Atlas Shrugged.”

If they ever do, it could wrest the crown for awfulness from “The Fountainhead,” which can still be seen, usually in the dead of night, on Turner Classic Movies. Those who doubt that it deserves the title can judge for themselves this Wednesday at 1:45 AM.

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September 16th, 2007
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Viewing 9 Comments

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    This review and report on Ayn Rand's influence over the last 60 years or so, should sound the alarms. Marshal your positions everyone. This fine, brief, totally on-point review should arouse all sleepyheads.
    The last Ayn Rand post created a thread of staunch supporters, taking those of us who know little of her "philosophy" by surprise. I read "The Fountainhead" in one all-night sitting, having just broken up with a my second or third boyfriend. The thick but superficial story was diverting and, thus, perfect for my needs. Only later did someone surprise me by referring to Rand's novels as a "philosophy." Until then, I had considered Aristotle and Kant, Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein as quintessential philosophers. I believed philosophies offered and demanded back rigorous thinking. Generally, too, philosophy spoke to how we know what we think we know and/or why we live and die. I was young and reading to escape when I read The Fountainhead, but I was also more immersed in the great philosophers, from Plato to the Existentialists, than in anything else.
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    I really think her disciples spend their spare-time surfing these sort of posts to see who can most effectively extinguish the opinions of anyone who has the temerity to criticize Any Rand’s precious philosophy, which is nothing more than a justification for gluttony.

    As a side note - Greenspan didn’t seem so bad (from the bits I saw) on 60 Minutes this evening.
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    Check this link to see first-hand what happened the last time.
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    i was going to write something rude here, but decided not to as this is my first comment at this blog. so here goes the nicest thing i can bring myself to say:

    If angie and brad make 'Atlas Shrugged' and they actually deliver the 3-hour-long 'I am He-Man, tremble before my logical power of reasoning!!' speech of John Galt, i would go watch it just to see how many people in the theater fall asleep. to tell the truth, i skipped pages 3-60 of the speech and i dont think i missed much.
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    The Fountainhead film is a great guilty pleasure: absolutely laughable yet played with such sincerity and seriousness as to be hilarious.

    Laughable is about what I think of Ayn Rand as a "philosopher." What I know of objectivism renders it objectionable. (I'm in no hurry to subject myself to her "novels.")

    BTW: Here's Pauline Kael's capsule review of the movie:

    A little delirious and definitely skewed. Can people who see this picture ever forget the sight of the silvery-blond columnist Dominique (Patricia Neal) galloping up on her black horse and slashing her riding crop across the face of the tall, mocking stranger who had looked at her impertinently while he was using a pneumatic drill in the quarry? He's the genius architect Howard Roark (Gary Cooper). When his design for a public-housing project is altered, he dynamites the building; put on trial, he justifies his action with an attack on collectivism and the parasites of the left. Ayn Rand wrote the screenplay, based on her 1943 novel, and true to her hero's principles, she wouldn't permit any changes in her (megalomaniac, comic-book) dialogue. King Vidor directed this paean to the individualism of "superior" people, made in a sleek, hollow, Expressionist style that owes a lot to film noir. It's an extravaganza of romantic, right-wing camp, with the hyper-articulate superman Roark standing in the wind on top of a phallic skyscraper, and the fierce, passionate Dominique rising in an open elevator to join him there. Despite Rand's denials, Roark was said to be based on Frank Lloyd Wright, and Vidor wanted Wright to design Roark's buildings, but had to settle for some bland imitations. The futurist structures are often obvious models and painted backgrounds. With Raymond Massey as the newspaper tycoon; Kent Smith as the mediocre architect; Robert Douglas as the despicable architecture critic; Henry Hull as Roark's Louis Sullivan-like teacher; and Ray Collins and Jerome Cowan. Warners.
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    Thanks for that NRO link. That was really interesting and got me on a reading jaunt for an hour or so.

    Also, thanks for *that link*, Viscount to that old comment thread. I have no idea how I missed that back in March.

    How intense was that? Whew, boy.
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    So where have all the Rand-fans gone? Could it be that newcritics' most persuasive thinkers, in fact, epersuaded them to think again somewhere during that earlier discourse?
    If so, will those Inspired Persuaders, please, persuade the USA--and not merely to the fallacies in Ayn Rand's philosophy as such, but, everything else?
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    If not for Ayn Rand, there'd be no 2112.

    Just remember that, ya liberal bastards!
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    Though Rand's philosophy as extolled in her two novels has mostly been discredited as laughably naive, and worse, ruthlessly self-involved, it continues to appeal to many who are, well, laughably naive and ruthlessly self-involved. There is no convincing them that the mechanisms of free-market capitalism, despite delivering considerable wealth to both the state and the top tiers, ends up being a bigger drain on humanity than a benefit. Trying to deprogram a Randian thinker is akin to convincing a fundamentalist that god is dead.
 

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