Wednesday, October 4
TCM Spotlight: Architecture in the Movies

Architects in Film

8:00 PM The Fountainhead ('49)
10:00 PM The Towering Inferno ('74)
1:00 AM Strangers When We Meet ('60)
3:00 AM Antonio Gaudi ('86)
4:15 AM Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House ('48)

“It’s a conspiracy, I tell you. The minute you start they put you on the all-American sucker list. You start out to build a home and wind up in the poorhouse.”
—Jim Blandings (Cary Grant) in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (RKO, 1948)

From maverick visionaries to emotionally tortured souls and budget-oblivious builders, such is the role of the on-screen architect.

Portrayed as “an architect of genius in a world of spineless mediocrity,” idealist Howard Roark (Gary Cooper) takes on the architectural establishment in The Fountainhead (8:00 PM). Based loosely on Frank Lloyd Wright, Ayn Rand’s best-selling novel-turned-film chronicles the struggles of the lone champion of modern architecture in pre-war Manhattan. Modern architecture comes under fire again in the ‘70s disaster film The Towering Inferno (10:00 PM); architect Doug Roberts (Paul Newman) designs the world’s tallest building in San Francisco, which turns into an inferno due to faulty construction. The film questions, yet hails, the achievement of contemporary high-rise structures. In contrast, married Los Angeles architect Larry Coe (Kirk Douglas) faces personal and professional dilemmas in the form of both women and dream commissions in Strangers When We Meet (1:00 AM). The life of a famed turn-of-the-century Spanish architect is explored in Antonio Gaudi(3:00 AM), documenting his profound influence on the Spanish Art Nouveau movement. And the domestic problems of first-time homebuilders Jim and Muriel Blandings (Cary Grant and Myrna Loy) are the core of the satire Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (4:15 AM). The pair plays gullible Manhattanites who flee to suburban Connecticut in search of their dream house, only to find their vision of utopian bliss is just an illusion.