The Fountainhead (1949) Starring Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, Raymond Massey, Kent Smith, Robert Douglas, Henry Hull, Ray Collins, Jerome Cowan.

Directed by King Vidor.

Runtime: 114 Minutes.

Rating: PG.

Architect Howard Roarke (Cooper) designs some of the most butt-ugly modern buildings imaginable (which as they are shown here would be impossible to build according to architecture experts). He thinks a conspiracy hatched by his fellow architects is sabotaging his career when he gets fired from an architecture firm. In fact what is sabotaging his career is that he designs some of the most butt-ugly modern buildings imaginable.

Roarke begins an affair with a younger woman he meets while doing general labour on a building site but melodramatically decides he is not good enough for her and refuses to continue with it until he has made something of himself and been vindicated.

His career path has him starting over at the bottom and working his way up to getting contracts from the few people who like his designs of boxy, steel and glass monstrosities that defy the laws of physics and gravity by remaining upright.

York refuses to allow any input into his designs. When one of them is compromised by a few changes he blows up the finished product (A low income housing project no less) and is taken to court where his philosophy is put under scrutiny.

Ayn Rand's book The Fountainhead was an attempt to articulate an ideology she claimed to have invented called "Objectivism". The philosophy was a reaction against Stalinism which Rand lived under some of the excesses of which she was subjected to and scarred mentally for life by. Really Objectivism is just selfishness tinged with narcissism, a persecution complex and quasi-Fascist overtones. Few like-minded people had the temerity to waste other people's time with such egocentric nonsense before Rand's books came out. More and more of them are wasting other people's time with such egocentric nonsense by injecting into the political arena under the guise of "conservatism" which it is not.

The type of irresponsible extremist rightwing mindset on display here helped warp conservative movements around the world for the past half century plus. It currently haunts backrooms of rightwing political parties and retains a place of prominence on Fox News (America's specialty misinformation channel for raving and deluded idiots and bigots).

The lack of real world political knowledge Rand had is also pretty

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