Forming the craft: Play‐writing and photoplay‐writing in Britain in the 1910s

Abstract

The significance of tracing intermedial connections lies not only in seeing the emergence of a new discipline but also in understanding more of what practitioners thought they were doing. For narrative film‐making, the professionalization of screenwriting involved rationalization based principally around theatre and art practice, drawing on sources such as theatre critic William Archer's Play‐making (1912). Using a quasi‐linguistic model, and by comparing Archer with screenwriting advice, opinion and practice from the 1910s, this article traces the establishment of the assumptions that still underpin professional screenwriting today.

Keywords:

• screenwriting
• professionalization
• screenplay
• scenario
• dramaturgy
• screen idea

Notes

1. I refer in particular to Bourdieu 1984 and 1996.

2. The term ‘screen idea’ has been used by Parker to describe the formation of inspiration into a more concrete outline for a film or TV drama (1998, 57). In this sense it has something in common with Elliott's 1915 notion of a ‘plot‐germ’, though this is rather narrower in conception (27 May 1915, 879). See Macdonald 2004a.

3. Elliott's account refers to his first production, released as His Reformation (London Films, July 1914). Elliott explained that ‘my first year's results of 275 refusal forms and 10 acceptances tends to prove it was uphill work at best’ p. 793.

4. At least two publications were ostensibly published by screenwriting schools: Graham 1913 and Anon 1915.

5. For reasons of consistency, I use the term ‘director’ in this article. As Adrian Brunel described in the early 1930s, ‘the Director is often mis‐called the Producer’ (1933, 163). E.G. Cousins was clear in 1932 that this was a hangover from theatrical practice; the producer ‘used to be the person directly responsible for the making of the film on the floor, a position corresponding to that of the producer in the theatre. But that functionary is now called the director, and the producer is now the man responsible for the whole film, from inception to completion’ (1932, 43).

6. This status was still not enough for some; E.G. Cousins pejoratively described the equal importance of the scenarist, the director and the ‘cutter’, with each in control of the production at different times; a bad system, in his book. Cousins called for all three roles to be combined in one person as ‘the kinist’ (Cousins 1932, ch. IV).

7. For accounts of various links between early film and theatre in particular, see Salt 1992, 111–13; Brewster and Jacobs 1997; Burrows 2003; Rushton 2004.

8. John Cabourn, ‘1906–1927 and After: Twenty One Years of British Films’, MS, Brunel Collection, British Film Institute National Library, London, 29/1–2, p. 5.

9. Adrian Brunel, ‘Random Jottings and Rough Notes’, MS, Brunel Collection, British Film Institute National Library, London, 161/4.

10. The works quoted are Archer 1892; Anon 1910; Archer 1912.

11. This article draws material from William Archer's ‘new and cheaper edition’ of 1913.

12. This was an English development of the pièce bien faite approach taken by the French, particularly Eugène Scribe from 1815 to 1861 and Victorien Sardou from 1860.

13. See Salt 1992, 88–91 for a discussion of French and US practice, the ‘9‐foot rule’ and the plan américain. See also Brewster 1990.

14. As in Eliot Stannard's script for A Single Man (1920), Scene 19 (British Film Institute National Library).

15. Eliot Stannard, ‘Mr. Gilfil's Love Story’, unpublished screenplay (London, Ideal Films, 1920), Fred Lake Special Collection, British Film Institute National Library, London; A.V. Bramble, Mr. Gilfil's Love Story (London, Ideal Films, 1920), National Film and TV Archive, London.

16. Eliot Stannard and A.V. Bramble use the term in their The Laughing Cavalier (1917), Fred Lake Collection, British Film Institute National Library, p. 3; as does Kate Gurney in her A‐Huntin’ we will go (1923), British Library Manuscript Collection (Additional MSS ADD 71938/M49), p. 4.

17. British Library Manuscript Collection, Additional MSS ADD 71938‐45.

18. J. Bertram Brown, ‘Double Life’, unpublished screenplay, Cinema Museum, London; Benedict James, ‘The Great Gay Road’, unpublished screenplay, Brunel Collection, British Film Institute National Library, London; Adrian Brunel, ‘Bon Zoo’ & ‘Bonzolino’, unpublished MS screenplays, Brunel Special Collection, British Film Institute National Library, London, Box 214.

19. Eliot Stannard and A.V. Bramble, ‘The Laughing Cavalier’, unpublished screenplay, Fred Lake Collection, British Film Institute National Library, London.

20. It should be noted that much screenplay format was approximate even when ostensibly ‘standardized’, before the advent of specialist software such as Final Draft. See Macdonald 2004b, 43–4.

21. See Barr 2002. Barr refers to the writer Charles Bennett's remark that Hitchcock would require the services of a ‘constructionist’ to fit his vivid scenes or ‘touches’ into the narrative (2002, 232).

22. Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing (1960), which quotes from William Archer, has been on the booklist of the MA in Screenwriting at Leeds Metropolitan University in recent years.

23. Low disliked the English practice of writers grouping shots into scenes, which she suspected helped create ‘bad scripts … [as it] put a premium on compact scenes in the stage manner’ (1971, 234).