Green-eyed goddess Alida Valli played Ayn Rand's alter ego, Kira, in the 1942 adaptation of the autobiographical novel We the Living. Kentucky filly Patricia Neal played Rand's alter ego, Dominique Francon, in the 1950 adaptation of The Fountainhead. Over the years many actresses, notably Angelina Jolie, craved the part of Dagny Taggert, strong-willed heroine of Rand's magnum opus, Atlas Shrugged. Rand's choice to play the railroad magnate?
Raquel Welch.
That statuesque '60s pinup girl is quite different from Taylor Schilling, the slim, Diane Kruger-ish blonde who plays Taggert in Paul Johansson's first installment of a planned three-part adaptation of Rand's ideological romance novel that opens tomorrow.
A 1991 poll conducted for the Library of Congress asked 5,000 Book-of-the-Month club members about the most influential book on them. Atlas Shrugged came second to the Bible. Which is fitting, for the work of Rand, philosopher/pornographer of free-market capitalism, is considered the Libertarian bible.
Even those who do not share Rand's bedrock belief in what she called "The Virtue of Selfishness" enjoy her potboilers steamy from the friction of man against state, politically speaking, and women against man, erotically speaking.
The pleasures of the screen We the Living and The Fountainhead are many. They include the nonjudgmental understanding that a woman can be sexually attracted to one man and intellectually attracted to another (We the Living). They include the depiction of female yearning to find her sexual and intellectual equal in the same man (Fountainhead). They include the assumption of female intelligence and power.
Clark Gable and Barbara Stanwyck fought to be cast in The Fountainhead, a film of Freudian delirium ultimately made with Gary Cooper and Neal. I remember very little of the pontifications of Cooper's character, Howard Roark, the Frank Lloyd Wright-type architect who refuses to compromise his creative vision. What I remember is how director King Vidor found the visual correlatives for Rand's overheated prose, showing Roark wielding a phallus-like drill and standing astride his phallus-like skyscraper.
Thoughts about Rand? Rand novels? Rand movies? (Which include her very odd screenplay for the 1945 Jennifer Jones/Joseph Cotten film Love Letters). The Rand cult?
Ah The Fountainhead. That's where I first learned that "No means yes."— phillygwm- It's "Taggart," not "Taggert."— zipman
- Thought that WAS the case, but had to look it up! Most people don't seem to know that little trick any longer! — BEMiller
- Another view:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stUCdDS6VgY&feature=youtu.be— Kagigstead - Melodramatic mush of Neverland! Ayn Rand, after all, WAS a product of her environment!— BEMiller
Rand was by the end of her life a total hypocrite, receiving government programs that she derided previously like social security and Medicare. Her philosophy doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny when it comes to human nature, anymore than Karl Marx does. Indeed, one could argue they are 2 sides of the same theoretical coin. Both posit ideals of human society and human nature that don't hold up in reality. The Soviet Union collapsed because of Marxist theory, and the United States may collapse from Randian theory. Further, followers of both tend to be overly dogmatic and virtually cult-like in their faithfulness to theory and intolerance of heretics. Still, if this movie, looked good I would probably still see it. Other movies have adapted Randian themes (see Ironman 2 and The Incredibles)that have been well made. (as have movies with a Marxist viewpoint, see Titanic and Reds).- If you honestly think that the current policies of the United States, be they economic, social, or political, are anything even remotely close to "Randian theory," then it's very clear that, if you ever actually took the time to read any of her books, you didn't comprehend A WORD of it. Our massive deficit due mostly to corporate welfare and military involvement in areas of the world that in no way whatsoever benefit our rational self interest are basically the premise of how the country collapsed in Atlas Shrugged, so if anything, her theories have been proven correct.
Rand, nor Marx, as far as I know, made any claims about the origins of man that could even be tested scientifically, by the way, so your comment about them not holding up to scientific scrutiny is COMPLETELY meaningless. Please, have some inkling of what you're talking about before post such useless drivel online; remember, there are people out there reading this stuff who can and do actually read.— TheCrookedMan - ahh, the fountainhead...where we learned, to quote bobby, from dirty dancing, "some people matter, and some people don't."— Dogma
- In a book of essays by Rand, she stated that she wanted Katharine Hepburn to play Dagny Taggart.— sherry37
- Zipman: Thanks for the correction. Sherry37: Rand wanted Hepburn in 1957; by 1967, she wanted Welch, who was younger and sympathetic to Objectivism.— carrierickey
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