Form and Function in The Fountainhead - Movie Review Example

 Form and Function in The Fountainhead On a one-page website entitled “Fountainhead Revisited,” Fountainhead fanatic Fred Himebaugh introduces his proposal with the line, “The Fountainhead is perhaps the greatest movie ever made.” Himebaugh then proceeds to announce his call for some “public-spirited and very, very rich people” (http://home.comcast.net ) to help him accomplish his goal: to colorize The Fountainhead. If this weren’t appeal enough, the webmaster—or pagemaster—has provided visual examples. Using two stills from the film, Himebaugh offers visitors a black & white (1949) shot of Howard Roark (Cooper) at an office window overlooking a monolith of architecture and fingering a building model (that looks much like a Frank Lloyd Wright work), with a caption of dialogue beneath that reads, "A building has integrity just like a man -- and just as seldom!" and a second shot of Dominique Francon (Neal) standing somewhat over a somewhat slouching Roark, with the caption, “I wish I could say it was a temptation." Nothing too remarkable, really, at first read. If visitors stay on the page long enough, however, they see a magical transformation, an homage to colorization and to The Fountainhead: each still flashes to its potential version. Roark is now an everyman in loyal blue suit and power read tie; the carpet he stands on is teal; and the buildings he looks at and touches a model of are retro peach; the skyline penthouse Francon and Roark rest in is romanticized with more antique teal (the walls, the floor, the lighting); the characters’ b&w tie garb stays put; and the buildings outside are daguerreotype and gunmetal grey, with twilight teal-lighted windows in some. Regardless of the controversy over colorizing old works, of the good intentions of Rand’s number one fan, regardless of such architects turned critic as Nancy Levinson, who in an essay on the film balks at its typical Hollywoodization of architects, (29-39) and regardless of the compulsion to “modernize” a storyline or script with the modern color wheel, The Fountainhead in its original format, condition, and shape is a testament to the themes, metaphors, and symbols, characters, and storyline of the novel by the same name. The filmic elements and creative choices, that is, contribute to the ideas expressed by objectivist philosopher and writer Ayn Rand. THE CHARACTERIZATION From the start of the film, the characters are constructed and developed to embody the ideals of Rand’s message(s). She once said, My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity and reason as his only absolute. (www.aynrand.org) Not only does the film’s central focus—architects and architecture—affirm the architectural business, representing real-world players, but the characters, especially the protagonist, reveal Rand’s outlook: Howard Roark represents this concept as an idealistic, principled individualist who refuses to conform to the rules of architectural school (resisting the copying of ancient, classical styles), who works blue collar jobs rather than buy into the popularism that is the architecture business, and who designs what he pleases. As the last ditch effort to grasp his autonomy, even, he destroys his greatest creation. When he is indicted, sued by the state, he makes his climactic stand: “The creator thinks; the parasite copies.” Also contributing to the conflict are the foils—Peter Keating, fellow architect, who, like some real characters in the business, thieves his way to the top by stealing (taking credit for) Roark’s designs; Ellsworth Toohey, powerful administrator at The Banner (much like numerous self-indulgent stuffed shirt critics the artist is up against in real life), who spearheads campaigns against Roark’s innovative and iconoclastic style; the pasty Gail Wynand, newspaper owner MISE en SCENÉ: THE CAMERA ANGLES and MOVES At the center of the film, as in any film, the visual composition is a controlling element. Especially with The Fountainhead, wherein the significance of social and psychological structure is depicted, for example, in the early scenes, with the dominating, intimidating (at first) Francon towering over the quarry-working Roark, as she looks down (literally) from a granite ledge tens of feet above. A few scenes later, the unknowing mistress is snapping commands to the stonemason (so she thinks) who is hunkered over a fireplace that needs repair in her manse, with the laborer on or almost on his knees, Francon standing over him, and the dark of old money or selfishness spatially encroaching. And in still later moments, the buildings, the sculpted from God-sized things gleam as if proudly, they loom as if ominously, they are in the background, the foreground, the conversation, the reasoning, and the core of the building commerce’s being. And even at the film’s end, the wind whips through the rugged Roark’s shirt; the same wind that seems to whisper in the background as the knowledgeable ones at the start speak to the shadows where Roark is, admonishing his solitary efforts; at the end, then, the space on the screen is high and sky and clearly suggesting the success of a man whose integrity climbs above the masses in one last symbol of individualism and nonconformity at all costs. LIGHT and DARK, WINDOWS and DOORS As a function of mise en scene, the aesthetic use of light as blinding commerce (both a boon and a bane for the central character) and dark as the traditional corruption of art in its most rigorous and purest ideal, work with such elements as camera angles emphasizing windows that fill the screen (which is also, of course, a window), suggesting promise, hope, open-ness to greatness and doors that darkened point to the closed-mindedness of the crowd, of the collective, mass mentality that Roark resists. THE ARCHITECTURE as SETTING and CENTER The Enright. The Cortlandt. Roark designs the “right” and blows up the “court”. And the film depicts the subliminal thematic representation--of the individual as virtuous and the masses as a threat to sovereignty, for instance--with a visually aesthetic accuracy. Also throughout the film are the massive, ever-present structures, from the great skyscraper that morphs into a great book cover and the cliffs of granite in the opening to the larger-than life models to the heights of the Wynand construction site. Sites and structures are symbolic, clearly, of Roark’s (man’s, the architectural artist’s) exaggerated refusal to compromise in the commercially-driven building trade. They are of rock. They are of steel. They are impenetrable, immovable, and enduring…beyond all of the trappings of business. The novel, The Fountainhead, was written in the 1940’s…published (after twelve rejections) in 1943. The screenplay, also written by the creative control of Rand, was produced in 1949. The monochrome was the single option at the time, an option that not only contributes to but enhances—along with the other techniques and elements of the late 40s--the projections of self-interest, the themes of man as individual and man as hero, and the philosophies of the author who once wrote that “Reality exists as an objective absolute—facts are facts, independent of man's feelings, wishes, hopes or fears.” (www.aynrand.org) And this includes Fred Himebaugh’s wishes for color and Nancy Levinson’s wishes for more realistic representation of architects. WORKS CITED Himebaugh, Fred. “Fountainhead Revisited.” Fredösphere. Blog. Dec. 2005. http://home.comcast.net/~fred_himebaugh/ fountain.html (11 Dec. 2005) Levinson, Nancy. “Tall Buildings, Tall Tales: Architects in the Movies.” Architecture and Film. ed. Mark Lamster. New Jersey: Princeton Architectural Press, 2000. Rand, Ayn. “Introducing Objectivism.” 1962. The Ayn Rand Institute. http://www.aynrand.org/site/PageServer? pagename= objectivism intro (10 Dec. 2005). Read More