Fountainhead, The movie

I saw the 1949 movie Fountainhead, based on the novel, with the screenplay by Ayn Rand herself. A two hour movie, it is too short to capture the book. Yet, the movie fails to capture your imagination, being nothing more than a rendering of the book's screenplay. Gary Cooper as Howard Roark just doesn't have the presence to carry to off, being too wooden. Elseworth Toohey is different from what you imagine him to be. He is potrayed as a gruff, authorative character whereas I would I would imagine him to be a wily, cunning and gentle person. Patricia Neal as Dominique Francon and Raymond Massey as Gail Wynand are convincing. The movie is largely based on Part 3 and Part 4 of the book, and rushes throught with the first two parts. Its too old a movie, made in a different era and there is simply too much potential in the book for the movie to be remade into a classic. Hope to see someone making a good movie out of this book. A small excerpt from a IMDB user comment about the story's potential:

"You've got Roark's years of struggling; you've got lavish parties that could serve as beautiful set pieces; you could have panoramic shots of Roark's monolithic buildings being erected; you've got the Wynand papers rolling off the presses with headline shots like in old movies and then the papers go on strike and the presses stop and people are picketing in the streets below; you've got quiet moments like Keating and Katherine sitting on the park bench in the falling show with the little flakes dropping on her red wool mittens and then BOOM, the housing project explodes lighting up the night; you've got the camera following the boy who's lost in the woods as he tops the rise of the hill and sees the Monadnock Valley construction site spread below him; and then that final seen, perfectly written to be the final scene of a movie, where Dominique rides up in the elevator and watches the city fall away from her as she rises to the top and finds only the sky and the figure of Howard Roark. I could go on and on; so many great cinematic details. "

P.S: Seems Atlas Shrugged is being made into a movie. See this