Critics reviews

It is worth revisiting the faithfully adapted 1949 Warner Bros. production in order to help define the nature of a culture of Trumpism. The Fountainhead is more than a valuable insight into the romantic inner life of American conservatism; the film is both a fantasy and a roadmap that compellingly delineates not only what the aspirations of this current government are, but also how they came to be elected, and what path brought them here.

It's Vidor's pure, ecstatic vision that The Fountainhead puts lavishly yet starkly on display... Here, in a story of egomania rendered heroic, [Vidor] comes up with a grand, symphonic image repertory, an utterly individual rendering of individuals who break free of the surrounding landscape and are united in a majestic, colossal artistic creation that, at the same time, galvanizes the natural forces around it.

Few films have ever so explicitly expressed a political ideology... Vidor's stylistic choices were crucial to the film's overall impact. The menacing atmosphere of The Fountainhead is achieved by "borrowing film noir's angles and darkness, its paranoia, its focus on a beleaguered or tormented individual.