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The Fountainhead movie from 1949 feels like a direct rip of Ayn Rand's own book but somehow misses the whole point
I watched it last night and they cut out like half the philosophical arguments that made the book famous, so was it really inspired by the source material or just a shallow copy using the same characters?
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alicemurphy2mo ago
The movie actually had to cut a lot of the philosophical stuff because a film can't just be people debating for hours, that would be unwatchable. They kept the core story and the most important ideas about individualism and integrity, which is what makes it a faithful adaptation in spirit if not in exact detail. Your mileage may vary but I think the visual storytelling does a better job showing the conflict between Rand's ideals and the world than the book does with its heavy handed monologues. The film's focus on the relationship between Roark and Wynand actually sharpens the themes about compromise versus sticking to your guns.
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the_christopher1mo ago
That thing you said about the rape scene being sanitized reminds me of how my buddy once tried to explain the book to me over beers and got so wound up he knocked his glass over. He was yelling about how the movie missed that edge, which I guess is what you're getting at with how it sanded down the rough parts.
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susansingh2mo ago
Take a closer look at how the movie treated the rape scene from the book. The film made it look way more romantic and consensual than Rand wrote it, which totally changes how you read Roark's whole "I take what I want" philosophy. That one change might be why the movie feels shallow, because it sanitized the very thing that was supposed to show how far his individualism went.
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