The Fountainhead

source: The Fountainhead

Trailer—The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead

This is one of the most boring movies I've ever seen. The director turned his actors into automatons. They spoke their lines, hit their marks, and gave the most wooden performances I've only experienced in school plays! Wonderful actors, not acting. Raymond Massey did the best with his character. He, too, was wooden for most of the movie, but finally started to act in the last half hour of the movie. But, Raymond Massey has often done that in movies. Patricia Neal, also started to act at the end, but, it was too late to salvage a rotten movie. I love most old movies, but this one belongs on a junk heap.

King Vidor's overblown melodrama dives right into its theme with a blunt lack of subtlety in its opening scenes, and proceeds, with near-hysterical campness, to hammer it home with barbed dialogue that amounts to nothing more than a series of speeches. Gary Cooper is the uncompromising architect who refuses to conform, and Patricia Neal the sexually frustrated columnist turned on by the way he handles his drill. Raymond Massey's character, a newspaper mogul who has given no thought to journalistic integrity in his quest for power, does have moments of interest, but the endless posturing of all the characters - all of whom are unlikable - quickly becomes tiresome.