The Fountainhead

The Fountainhead (1949) is King Vidor's drama you can watch online on iFILM. Architect Howard Roark builds the way he believes is right and refuses to bend his blueprints to anyone else's taste, even when that stubbornness costs him his entire career.

Clients want columns and familiar grandeur; Roark hands them bare concrete and the sharp lines of the future. He would rather lose every commission and break rock in a granite quarry than surrender one detail. That is where Dominique Francon finds him — a columnist who falls for the very rigidity that may destroy him. Circling the story are newspaper baron Gail Wynand and a critic determined to grind Roark into dust. The hero's courtroom speech at the climax has long been quoted on its own.

Gary Cooper plays Roark, with Patricia Neal and Raymond Massey beside him. Ayn Rand adapted the screenplay from her own novel, and the film plays like a blunt manifesto: the individual against the crowd, no compromise, no shades of grey. It's for viewers who like old Hollywood that argues an idea instead of dodging into plot. Stream The Fountainhead (1949) online on iFILM.