THE FOUNTAINHEAD 1949

When it comes to The Fountainhead, I wish there was a way for me to return my mind back to the state of blissful ignorance I enjoyed the first time I saw this amazing film. That was many years ago. Back when The Fountainhead’s chief attractions for me were director King Vidor’s overripe, purple-prose approach to the material―a style always threatening to soar even more over-the-top than his notorious sex-and-sand opus, Duel in the Sun (1946)―and the overheated, over-emphatic screenplay by famed author, Ayn Rand, adapted from her hefty novel.

The plot of The Fountainhead: ruggedly individualistic architect Howard Roarke (Gary Cooper, still sexy, but looking a tad careworn at 47) doing battle against a world of cartoonishly single-minded villains hell-bent on commodifying his genius— was always less interesting than its presentation. What I took delight in was the dramatic persuasiveness of The Fountainhead applying a patently theatrical and artificial method of acting to a script of arch, over-embellished dialog, all in service of an extravagantly overwrought post-German Expressionist visual style. Ayn Rand’s verbose, almost feverishly nonsensical novel resisted any kind of realistic adaptation.  King Vidor, in never once rooting the film in any kind of recognizable reality, managed to fashion an compellingly excessive film that served her work well.

Gary Cooper as Howard Roark

Patricia Neal as Dominique Francon

Raymond Massey as Gail Wynand

Robert Douglas as Ellsworth Toohey

As a dyed-in-the-wool visual aesthete whose lifelong relationship with film has been a battle with the influence of style over substance; I’m aware that my fondness for The Fountainhead has little to do with a sober assessment of its merits and faults. I’m nuts about the movie chiefly because it’s so visually striking and intoxicatingly stylized. I respond on an almost visceral level to how dazzling it is to look at, and I marvel at how closely the performances, in all their profound solemnity, hew so closely to that mannered, posturing style so expertly played for laughs in those old Carol Burnett Show movie spoofs. Indeed, in all of the areas where The Fountainhead seems to overplay its hand (it makes its points early and easily, then goes on to reiterate those same points, ad nauseum, scene after scene) I find I don’t fault the film so much as chalk it up to a particular type of broad-strokes, post-war American filmmaking.

The window of the past can do that…things you’d find unforgivably false in a film today look perfectly acceptable in a black & white film from the late '40s.

 Examples of The Fountainhead's breathtaking cinematography (Robert Burks) and art direction (Edward Carrere).

Well, that’s how things started for me and how things remained for some time. Unfamiliar with Ayn Rand or her philosophy (in any direct way), I was content to revel in The Fountainhead’s overwrought romantic melodrama and ravishing imagery with nary a thought given to its portentous themes. Themes that, even as a callow youth, struck me as slightly sophomoric.

When, many years later, I finally got around to reading The Fountainhead, I was actually surprised at what a windy polemic against Collectivism it was. I enjoyed the novel’s descriptive passages very much, and welcomed the fleshing out of the slim characterizations of the film, but its central plot was almost buried below a lot of ideological redundancies. It was nevertheless a book I enjoyed immensely, and, intrigued by Rand’s penchant for narrative overkill, I ventured forth and tackled her last and most famous novel, Atlas Shrugged. Bad move.

 I won’t turn this post into a diatribe against Objectivism or the unfortunate adoption of Atlas Shrugged and Rand’s philosophies by America’s Tea Party Movement. But let’s just say that when it came to learning more about Ayn Rand’s philosophical beliefs, more was decidedly less.

Flirting with Fascism
Ayn Rand liked to make it easy to identify the heroes and villains.
The villains have weak, effete names like Ellsworth Toohey, and are prone to striking 
dictatorial poses at the slightest provocation

  

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM

Before I had read The Fountainhead, it never crossed my mind that the film adaptation was, in some ways, little more than a visual-aid lecture on Objectivism. I just thought it was a great-looking movie saddled with an over-obvious, poorly-written screenplay. In viewing the film from Rand’s perspective, I can well imagine why she despised it; the power of King Vidor’s images overwhelm her words. 

And it's a good thing, too, for The Fountainhead is a real “movie lover”s movie. And by that I don’t mean lovers of good film; I mean folks who love the stylized artificiality of film. Realism in film has its place, but films that attempt to speak to us through metaphor or symbolism (like Charles Laughton’s The Night of The Hunter) benefit greatly from an overabundance of cinematic stylization. The Fountainhead is such a film. It’s full of gorgeous cinematography; sumptuous sets; movie stars who look like movie stars; fabulous costumes, and soap opera emotions. That none of it bears the slightest resemblance to human life as we know it only adds to its charm. 

The Fountainhead is one of those movies where people carry on entire conversations without ever looking directly at one another. Here, Patricia Neal assumes a familiar pose (looking off into the distance) while Raymond Massey and Gary Cooper try in vain to get her attention.

PERFORMANCES

I’ve always liked Patricia Neal. Her unadorned earthiness in Elia Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd (1957) and Martin Ritt’s Hud (1963) were the best things about those films. In a sea of lacquered, blonde bombshells, Neal was a home-grown Anna Magnani reminding us that sex appeal didn’t require a bullet bra and the disavowal of intelligence. Familiar only with latter-day Neal, imagine my surprise in seeing her at 22, given the full Hollywood-glam treatment in The Fountainhead, her second film. I had no idea she could be so stunning.

Cast as Dominique Francon The Fountainhead’s sole female character (was a time you’d have to open a novel by Sidney Sheldon or Jackie Collins to find a name like that), Neal is first seen heaving a Greek statue out of the window of her high-rise apartment because, “I wanted to destroy it rather than let it be part of a world where beauty and genius and greatness have no chance!”

And if you think there’s not an actress on earth who can pull off dialog like that, well, you’re right. It’s just the first of several scenes where Neal strives mightily against some of the strangest human dialogue ever committed to page. She’s not always successful, but she’s never less than fascinating to watch. Juggling numerous lovers and hard-to-fathom-motives, she manages to be glacially aloof and sexually agitated at the same time. 

Dominique Francon is a woman of high ideals who, before finding her spiritual equal in the noble Howard Roark, feels frustrated at having to live in a world that worships mediocrity. She vents her frustration by engaging in behavior favored by smart and successful women to this day: she intentionally becomes involved with inferior men. 

Her fiancé, the weak-willed Peter Keating, she chose because “He was the most safely unimportant person I could find.” She later weds hack newspaperman Gail Wynand to make good on her promise, “If I ever decide to punish myself for some terrible guilt, I’ll marry you.” 

Dominique is nothing if not a gal with a few issues she needs to work out.

Obsessing over Howard Roark's drill

THE STUFF OF FANTASY

Shave off all the whiskers and fluff from Rand’s one-sided proselyting. and The Fountainhead is a pretty satisfying triangular love story with a few interesting things to say about society. The rather unconventional romance between Dominique and Howard (controversially incited in the novel by an off-putting rape, but, thanks to the usual stylistic obfuscation of sex in Production Code-era Hollywood, comes off in the film as the usual yes/no, male/female roundelay) is lent credence by the palpable chemistry between real-life lovers Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal.

The rather salient points made by Rand about the dangers of a society committed to the lowest common denominator (are you listening Michael Bay, Vin Diesel, and Adam Sandler?) lack the bite they might have due to the deck being so heavily stacked on the side of Roark and his philosophy. The story tilts so far in his favor there's almost no real conflict. Indeed, Gary Cooper (not the most expressive actor when it comes to dialog) is asked to reiterate his character’s position so often that it creates the effect of someone trying to convince himself of an argument, not others.

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

Living in Los Angeles, a city of agonizingly random architectural design, I can identify with all the heated discussions on design that take place in The Fountainhead.  Indeed, in establishing an analogical relationship to architecture and any creative endeavor which must struggle to maintain its personal integrity in the face of public opinion, The Fountainhead is at its most successful. In this age when individuals justify the most heinous points-of-view with the claim “I’m not the only one that feels this way!” (as if that was ever a gauge of honor), and when widespread ignorance is proudly defended as anti-intellectual-elitism, The Fountainhead should feel more relevant than ever. Unfortunately, Ayn Rand can’t seem to get out of her own way long enough to let the points she wishes to make stand on their own merits of logic. Like the character of Ellsworth Toohey, who feels he has to tell the public what to think, Rand doesn’t trust the viewer to weigh the issues of Objectivism for themselves. Rand's fondness for words fails to let the medium of film do what it does best; evoke, not explain. Rand's handling of her own work is all-too-obvious. When I say The Fountainhead is black and white, I’m not just referring to the cinematography.

Ayn Rand wasn't fond of the architectural designs art director Edward Carrere used in the film. She wanted the buildings to reflect the works of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Watching the film today, it takes considerable effort to get my mind to relax and just let the movie entertain me as it did in the past. It feels like I spend the first ten minutes or so just trying to blot out the sermonizing. Mercifully, if I allow myself to focus on the sumptuous Max Steiner score (Gone With the Wind, Casablanca), and sink into Robert Burks’ rapturous cinematography (Vertigo, North by Northwest), pretty soon I’m back where I want to be. No longer a postulate at the lectern of Objectivism, just a movie fan enjoying a staggeringly gorgeous film.

Copyright © Ken Anderson  2009 - 2012

SHADOW OF A DOUBT 1943

Decades before David Lynch turned his twisted lens on small-town perversity in the masterfully weird Blue Velvet, Alfred Hitchcock had already taken what I consider to be the definitive look at the pernicious effect of evil on small town life in Shadow of a Doubt. You can keep your Psycho, Vertigo, and Rear Window — classics all— but for me, there isn't a Hitchcock film that compares with Shadow of a Doubt.

Hitchcock to the left : Holding all the Aces

As a thriller, it has a simplicity of plot that is near-irresistible: A beloved uncle with a dark secret (Joseph Cotten) visits his family in a small northern California town. A secretive, closed-off person whose misanthropic nature contrasts starkly with the open friendliness he displays to insinuate himself into the lives of his distant family and the townsfolk. It isn't long before Charlie reveals himself to be a true figure of evil; his presence threatening to disrupt the conventional lives around him. His true nature also initiates a shattering coming-of-age for his adoring niece (Teresa Wright).

Santa Rosa, California

If you can imagine Vincente Minnelli's small-town valentine, Meet Me in St. Louis crossed with Orson Welles' noirish thriller The Stranger, then you have a pretty good idea of what a delightfully sinister mélange Hitchcock concocts in Shadow of a Doubt. (Both Thornton Wilder of Our Town and Sally Benson of Meet Me in St. Louis worked on the script for Shadow of a Doubt).

Teresa Wright as Charlotte Newton

Joseph Cotten as Charlie Oakley

Macdonald Carey as Det. Jack Graham

Patricia Collinge as Emma Newton

Henry Travers as Joseph Newton

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
I've always been impressed by Alfred Hitchcock's ability to balance humor and terror in his films. It always seemed like such a dangerous risk to take...potentially sacrificing mood or suspense for the sake of interjecting some bit of levity...but his films always carry it off. Almost always. The humor in Frenzy and Family Plot verges on the painful.
In Shadow of a Doubt the humor on display is of the gentle type derived exclusively from the characters. To great effect, Joseph Cotten's self-serious, misanthropic sociopath (how's that for a description? Reminds me of Wood Allen's line: "I'd call him a sadistic, sodomistic necrophile, but that would be beating a dead horse.") is contrasted with the practical and sweet Teresa Wright and her decidedly dotty family. Each is lovably offbeat in some very real way, and their harmless eccentricity lends them an endearing vulnerability in the face of Cotten's poisonous view of mankind.

"Really Poppa, you'd think Momma had never SEEN a phone! She makes no allowance for science. 
She thinks she has to cover the distance by sheer lung power!"

The Newton Family: If cast today, the parents look too much like grandparents

PERFORMANCES
I've always liked how Joseph Cotten never seemed to be too taken with his own good looks. He played both villains and romantic leads with such a refreshing lack of ego that even his monsters were likable.

Charlie- "The whole world's a joke to me."

As good as the entire cast of Shadow of a Doubt is, it's the work of Teresa Wright that towers over the rest. A stage-trained actress Oscar nominated for her first three film roles, Wright gives one of those performances that makes the film unimaginable without her. She is a wonderfully natural presence in the film, very contemporary in her acting style and apparently incapable of having a false moment on the screen. I can't think of another actress from this era who exudes such a down-to-earth quality. While so many of her contemporaries spoke in that stagy, mid-Atlantic dialect that telegraphed "acting!" Wright seemed not to be playacting at all. Her performance under Hitchcock's direction is one of her strongest.

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Years before he would succumb to stylistic self-consciousness, Shadow of a Doubt shows Hitchcock in full control of his gifts as a master storyteller. The film is sharp and compact and zips by at an entertaining and very suspenseful 108 minutes. Indeed, in this era where a film like Sex and the City 2 can eat up more than two hours with a virtually non-existent plot, or Quentin Tarantino can actually lose his way when confronted with a running time of less than 2 ½ hours (Death Proof is like the work of a gifted 10 year-old let loose with a camera), Shadow of a Doubt looks like nothing short of a miracle. There isn't a wasted frame, superfluous scene, or self-indulgent moment in this tightly-structured film that economically achieves its desired effect without skimping on character development or plot detail.

The almost psychic connection between Charlie and his niece Charlotte (Little Charlie), rendered cinematically.

Uncle Charlie- "We're old friends, Charlie. More than that. We're like twins."   

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

My absolute favorite parts of Shadow of a Doubt are the scenes chronicling Teresa Wright's mounting disillusion with her idealized uncle, Joseph Cotten. The psychological authenticity of her behavior and reactions are so keenly observed and subtly performed. It's marvelous to me that the screenwriters had the sense and took the time to really let Wright's awakening to her uncle's true nature be an integral part of the film's second half.

Everything is Suspect: Charlotte watches her uncle's powerful hands twisting a napkin.

Filmmakers today, afraid of losing the short attention-span of their audience, never seem to understand that unless you devote enough time to the psychology of your characters, no degree of plot twists or action scenes can generate interest in the outcome of a film. The most gripping moments from Shadow of a Doubt come from the scenes where the loss of idealism in Wright's character is something we can literally see. The defeated body language, the hardening of the voice, the way you can tell that she mourns for her previous state of ignorance. It's a masterful performance.

I love how Wright's once-free physicality around Charlie gradually grows awkward, and how she can't seem to stand looking at him. There are these great fleeting moments when you can see her studying him when he's not looking, searching for a betraying trace of the evil she knows is there but somehow missed.
The post-library dinner table scene is, from a psychological standpoint, one of the most emotionally true, discomfiting scenes of mounting family discord in modern cinema. It's in this scene that Teresa Wright really shines. Scarcely an actress today could handle the complexities of that scene (Ok, maybe Natalie Portman or Cate Blanchett...).

Charlotte notices a mysterious inscription inside of a ring her uncle just gave her.

As I've stated, Teresa Wright gives a stellar performance here, but kudos go to the team of writers who were smart enough to mine the dramatic possibilities in a young girl being forced to confront the ugliness of the real world. They could have played up the police/manhunt angle for the obvious action potential, but the film benefits greatly from keeping its focus on what the characters are going through rather than the chase and the procedurals of police work.

Though the term is bandied about a lot these days, Shadow of a Doubt has a deserved reputation as a Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece. A solid entertainment and suspenseful drama, but what resonates for me is that at its core it is a cunningly perceptive treatise on nostalgia and the romanticism of the past.

Charlie: "I keep remembering those things. The old things. Everybody was sweet and pretty then, the whole world. A wonderful world. Not like the world today. Not like the world now. It was great to be young then."

These words, spoken by a character embittered by what he sees as the corruption of good around him, are no truer then than they are now. Every age thinks the age past is the ultimate age of innocence. If you look on YouTube you can even read comments by people lamenting the state of the world today and denoting the '70s, '80s, and even the '90s as a "kinder, gentler time." As a man past middle-age, I find myself caught in that inevitable "curmudgeon zone" where everything about the world today seems somehow inferior (as is evident from my comments about contemporary filmmakers) and my past seems endlessly cheerier and innocent. Now mind you, the innocent and cheerier time I look back at with such rose-colored glasses are the '70s. And we all KNOW that the '70s were anything but innocent.
But that's what I mean, the world of the past is always soothing to our minds and we go to great lengths to recreate it as we wish to remember it. No matter how far from the truth it may be.

Hume Cronyn (right) making his film debut as a neighbor obsessed with the details of crime and murder.

The small-town life depicted in Shadow of a Doubt is a vision of America that never existed except in our minds and perhaps on our TV screens and in our movies. It takes a special kind of myopia to be able to (or need to) see the world in such a narrow fashion. To paraphrase Dickens, history has always been a combination of the best of times and the worst of times. The world is never all good, nor is it all evil. Shadow of a Doubt artistically shakes us out of our fantasies and reminds us that remaining in a state of ignorance is not the same as remaining in a state of innocence. Charlotte Newton has her eyes opened to some of the darkness that exists in the world, but seeing the world as it is, not as we wish it to be, is just a part of growing up.

On Uncle Charlie's twisted opinion of the world: "It's not quite as bad as all that, 
but sometimes it needs a lot of watching. It seems to go crazy every now and then."

And wasn't it Norman Bates in "Psycho" who said, "We all go a little mad sometimes" ?

Something Wicked This Way Comes:
Uncle Charlie arrives.

Copyright © Ken Anderson

LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN 1945

"Leave her to heaven, and to those thorns that in her
 bosom lodge to prick and sting her."
                                                                 William Shakespeare "Hamlet"

One area in which old movies effortlessly surpass contemporary motion pictures is in their ability to render the grotesque glamorous. The value of such facility is debatable, but sometimes I want my movies realistic, and other times I want my movies to be MOVIES...in big capital letters. Due to censorship and social mores of the time, older movies had to be very artful in how they dealt with unpleasant subjects. And whether it was murder, jealousy, obsession, or infanticide; when buffed to a high gloss by the Hollywood Dream Machine, bad never looked so good.

Gene Tierney as Ellen Berent

Cornel Wilde as Richard Harland

Jeanne Crain as Ruth Berent

Vincent Price as Russell Quinton

No film better exemplifies this than that Technicolor noir classic, Leave Her to Heaven. A film of such alluring visual overripeness that one can easily forget that it is probably one of the darkest and most twisted visions of familial dysfunction ever to come out of post-war era Hollywood.

Leave Her to Heaven is a rarity in the world of 40s film noir: the darkness occurs in the bright (and colorful) daylight. And at the center of this bright-hued nightmare is perhaps one of cinema's most relentlessly evil monsters. The monster in question? None other than the austerely exquisite Gene Tierney (saved from bland perfection by a charming overbite), fulfilling, in her role as socialite Ellen Berent, the long-standing film noir edict that any female that desirable has got to spell nothing but trouble.

Femme Fatale Red Flag #23: Really big monogram 

And trouble she is, for Ellen is nothing short of a walking “attractive nuisance” violation waiting to happen. Smart, lovely and affectionate on the surface, underneath all that window dressing lies a woman with a doozy of a father fixation and a psychopathically obsessive idea of love. The object of Ellen’s affection is author Richard Harland (Cornel Wilde, a worthy competitor to Tierney in the beauty department), whom she meets briefly on a train and who soon thereafter becomes the one she MUST have.

Babe Alert! We feel your pain, Ellen.

Never mind a pesky little detail like her already having a fiancé (a wounded-looking Vincent Price).

Russell- "I'm not a man who loves often, Ellen. I love once."
Ellen- "Thank you, Russ. That's quite a concession."
Russell- "I loved you and I'm still in love with you."
Ellen- "That's a tribute!"
Russ- "And I always will be...remember that."
Ellen- "Russ, is that a threat?"

To say that Ellen’s love for Richard grows after they get married is not to state the half of it. Ellen will be satisfied with nothing less than having Richard to herself 24/7, and woe betide the woebegone (be it family members, caretakers, or wheelchair–bound little brothers) foolish enough to think she’ll allow it to be otherwise.

Wedded Bliss...or else!

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT THIS FILM
The '30s and '40s may have been boom years for the “women’s film” (movies with female protagonists, told from a woman’s point of view, marketed to a female audience) but film noir always seemed to be lurking in the shadows, contrasting all those sunny Mrs. Miniver & I Remember Mama images of femininity with vitriolic visions of women intent on the destruction of the male.

Indeed, the fear of women is what sex in film noir is all about. The twist in Leave Her to Heaven is that the almost ethereally beautiful Tierney lacks the obvious sexual threat of, say, a Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, or Barbara Stanwyck— all of whom looked as if they’d just as soon plunge a pair of scissors into your back as look at you. Tierney's Ellen Berent is the ultra- scary female writ large because she looks like so many of the pin-ups and girls-next-door of the era. Made up to resemble every brunette Gene Kelly ever pursued in a wholesome musical, it’s quite startling when Tierney reveals herself to be a sick ticket of the order rarely seen in Production Code era movies.

Sweet as pie

The "crazy eyes" first make their appearance

PERFORMANCES
Gene Tierney gives the performance of her career and is the absolute embodiment of star power in this, her Academy Award nominated role. Though her character has all the trappings of overheated melodrama (overblown emotions, ostentatious glamour), she brings a level of assuredness to her portrayal that dares you to turn it into camp. Scene after scene dances right on the edge of being a real howler on par with Lana Turner during her Ross Hunter period - or any period Douglas Sirk - but there's something about the truth of her characterization (we don't like Ellen, but we "get" her) that keeps the film on track. She's terrific.

 The famous "Swim in the Lake" sequence

THE STUFF OF FANTASY
Who else? Gene Tierney. Outside of Vanessa Redgrave in Camelot, Julie Christie in Petulia, or Faye Dunaway in that big party scene in The Towering Inferno, I can’t think of another film in which a mere mortal was made to look like a fairy-tale goddess. (And if you haven’t seen Ms. Dunaway in that movie, do yourself a favor and rent it for that sequence alone. She and her cheekbones manage to upstage both Steve McQueen and Paul Newman, and she should have won a special Oscar just for keeping that jaw-dropping gown up.)

 Now THIS is what a movie star looks like!

THE STUFF OF DREAMS

If it was the intention of the filmmakers to put us off our guard by making this bleakly downbeat psychological thriller look like a picture postcard, then they succeeded. The gorgeous visuals: from art direction to costumes to locations, serve to create an almost David Lynchian look at the dark underside of a certain kind of privileged life. A certain kind of only-in-the-movies life. The effect of seeing such horrible things perpetrated by pretty people in glorious surroundings is both confounding and unsettling.

 The cinematography in Leave Her to Heaven -

David Lean meets Alfred Hitchcock

I came across this film relatively recently, and as a big fan of movies featuring overdressed bad girls, I was stunned that I had somehow missed Leave Her to Heaven in my youth (I mean, did Carol Burnett ever do a parody of this movie?). Anyway, fully expecting to be treated to a howling camp-fest of lacquered cheese, I was surprised, if not shocked, at what a powerful film it is. I mean, the various conflicts and tragedies are the stuff of melodrama, but they somehow have real emotional bite...a palpable feeling of despair. I was overwhelmed by how artfully the film was constructed and how daring its themes were. Who would ever think a major motion picture from the 1940s would include this exchange:

 Ellen- (Referring to her unborn child) "I hate the little beast, I wish it would die!"

Ruth- "How can you say such wicked things?"

Ellen- "Sometimes the truth is wicked."

YIKES! Even after watching it several times over the years, the film never seems dated (the clothes, yes, the emotions, no) and it remains one of my favorite melodramas to this day. Near perfect, its only misstep is a courtroom scene in which Vincent Price seems to be (over)acting in a different film entirely.

Undeniably dark, Leave Her to Heaven is the best example of what I call classic moviemaking: solid cast, top-notch technicians, sure-footed director, and a great script. The basics. All the CGI and 3-D in the world isn't gonna help a movie if it doesn't have these.

And I'll never let you go. Never, never, never... 

Copyright © Ken Anderson