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Jasmin Mirsal L Writing Pictures the Screenplay As a Form of Literary Royal Holloway, University of London Writing Pictures: The Screenplay as a Form of Literary Modernism PhD Media Arts Candidate Name: Jasmin Mirsal Supervisor: Prof Barry Langford, Department of Media Arts Declaration of Authorship I, Jasmin Mirsal, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: Date: 14 December 2018 2 Abstract Thesis Title: Writing Pictures: The Screenplay as a Form of Literary Modernism Is the screenplay a modernist literary form or merely an industrial blue-print? Despite increasing interest in the screenplay’s form and its history, not much is known about the interaction between the screenplay’s beginnings in the early twentieth century and the modernist movements surrounding it. There has been little examination of the screenplay’s formal characteristics in the context of literary modernism or screenwriters’ positions to the literary modernisms in their respective national settings. So how does the screenplay fit in the prevailing history of literary innovation, and can it be considered a form of literary modernism? In order to provide an answer to this question, I have conducted three case studies covering prominent screenwriters of three well-known western film industries. The first case study, “Anita Loos & Middlebrow Modernism”, investigates the development of the early American screenplay in the context of American Modernism and Imagism. The key objective of this case study is to trace the evolution of both the form and function of the screenplay in the growing American film industry and how it reflects and interacts with the modernist practices around it. The second case study, “Carl Mayer: The Screenplay between Weimar Modernisms” serves the objective of identifying formal, stylistic (and potentially literary) elements unique to the screenplay by examining Carl Mayer’s formally distinctive silent film screenplays in the context of German Expressionism and New Objectivity. The third case study, “Adrian Brunel: The Screenplay as Professional Practice” examines the screenplay in the context of artistic professionalization during a period when cultural practice diverged between popular culture and private cultural practice, such as exemplified by the Bloomsbury Group. 3 In the three case studies, different visions for the screenplay emerge, which emphasise the tension between the development of new forms and their commercial application. Close readings of screenplay texts and their evaluation in context to canonised modernist practices of the period highlight that the screenplay did not develop in an industrial vacuum but was an organic part of the efforts to explore the limits of the written word. The thesis concludes in proposing a broader definition of the screenplay that extends its capacity beyond that of an industrial blue-print but acknowledges that its industrial application has been a primary force in shaping its form. The thesis argues that there is no binary distinction between the screenplay as a commercial production tool and the screenplay as a modernist literary form, even as it vanishes into another form in the industrial film production process. As such, the screenplay in fact occupies a unique position as a quintessentially modern written form, linking words with images, artistic innovation with industry and the appropriation of the old for the new. 4 Acknowledgments As this thesis relies heavily on the assessment of primary texts and has therefore necessitated a considerable amount on archival research, I would like to acknowledge the generosity of the archives that have allowed me access to original screenplays and private papers. For the case study on Anita Loos, I wish to thank the Margaret Herrick Library at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles, and in particular Barbara Hall, for providing me with both access to and advice on the Anita Loos collection. For the case study on Carl Mayer, I wish to thank Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek in Berlin, especially Gerrit Thies, Lisa Roth and Cordula Döhrer for their assistance in accessing the Carl Mayer papers. Lastly, for the case study on Adrian Brunel, I would like to thank the BFI National Archive at the British Film Institute in London, in particular Jonny Davies, for providing me access to the Adrian Brunel collection. Where possible, excerpts of primary sources have been photographically reproduced and, if unavailable, transcribed. Every effort has been made to transcribe accurately and to capture relevant stylistic idiosyncrasies. All archival material quoted in the thesis has been included with the relevant permissions. 5 Table of Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgments ........................................................................................................ 5 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 8 Chapter 1: Literature Review: What is a screenplay? ........................................... 25 1.1 Practice to Theory: A Historiographic Overview ............................................... 40 1.2 Dominant Contemporary Paradigms .................................................................. 53 1.2.1 The Blue-Print Model .................................................................................. 53 1.2.2 The ‘Screenplay as Literature’ Model ......................................................... 57 1.2.3 Limits of the ‘Screenplay as Literature’ Model ........................................... 64 1.2.4 The ‘Screenplay as Intermediary’ Model .................................................... 66 1.2.5 Limits of the ‘Screenplay as Intermediary’ Model ...................................... 74 1.3 Questions of Authorship ..................................................................................... 76 1.4 Technical Document or Modernist Literary Form? ........................................... 81 Chapter 2: Anita Loos: Middlebrow Modernism ................................................... 85 2.1 Modernity’s readers ............................................................................................ 92 2.1.1 Modernist self-fashioning aesthetics and Hollywood celebrity culture ..... 100 2.1.2 The Middlebrow ......................................................................................... 105 2.1.3 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes: Modernist satire or satire on modernism? ..... 108 2.2 Anita Loos & the Modern Industrial Screenplay ............................................. 117 2.2.1 Loos and the early American screenplay ................................................... 120 2.3. How to and the movies: Screenplay manuals .................................................. 136 2.4 Conclusions ...................................................................................................... 151 Chapter 3: Carl Mayer: The Screenplay between Weimar Modernisms ........... 157 3.1 Carl Mayer: Then and now ............................................................................... 164 3.2 Expressionism and Weimar Film ..................................................................... 170 3.3 Carl Mayer: The Screenplay as Film Poetry .................................................... 182 3.3.1 Beginnings: The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919) and the Modernist Cinema ............................................................................................................................. 187 3.3.2 Compression as rhythm: Tartüff (1926) ..................................................... 193 3.3.3 Into the Hollywood mainstream: Sunrise (1927) ....................................... 201 3.4 Der Letzte Mann: Towards a New Objectivity ................................................ 210 3.5 Conclusions ...................................................................................................... 216 Chapter 4: Adrian Brunel: The Screenplay as Professional Practice ................. 219 4.1 The Professionals: Film as craft ....................................................................... 223 4.2 The amateurs: Separate, not removed .............................................................. 232 4.3 The Film Society: Popularising ‘films of merit’ .............................................. 240 6 4.4 The screenplay as foundation ........................................................................... 247 4.5 Teaching the screenplay: Brunel and the screenplay as craft ........................... 259 4.6 Conclusions ...................................................................................................... 266 Chapter 5: Conclusions: The Screenplay as Reluctant Modernism ................... 273 5.1 Industrial blue-print and/or modernist literature? ............................................ 276 5.2 Similarity versus difference .............................................................................. 279 5.3 The screenplay as reluctant modernism ........................................................... 289 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 295 Archival Sources .................................................................................................... 295 Secondary Sources ................................................................................................
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