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From "Understanding Movies" by Louis D. Giannetti, page 318: "Despite
the enormous importance that the script can play in a sound film,
some directors scoff at the notion that a writer can ever be the
dominant artist in the cinema. When asked what the value he placed
on his scripts, for example, Josef von Sternberg replied that the
narrative or story elements of his works were of 'no importance
whatsoever' to him. Antonioni once remarked that 'Crime and Punishment' was a rather ordinary story - the genius of the novel
lies in how it's told, not in the subject matter per se. Certainly
the large number of excellent movies based on routine, or even
mediocre scripts seems to bear out such anti-literary views.
With characteristic wit, Andrew Sarris has pointed out how the
director's choice of shot - how the action is photographed - is the
crucial element in most films, not merely the action as action.
....Sarris' observations reinforce the thesis of this book: that
subject matter alone can never be a reliable index of quality in a
film, for the artist must translate his subject into the forms of his
medium before its true content can be fully experienced and appraised.
In these terms, then, the screenwriter generally provides the subject
matter of a film, but the director creates its true content."
Follow Ups:
Judging by the amounts of garbage which are being passed for movies today.
I believe thare's got to be the combination of directing, screenwriting and acting to make it work right. That's obvious. Director's comments that you presented here are inconsequential and megalomaniac without watching their films. And finding them to be of value.
On The Idiosyncratic Nature Of The Screenplay -"A screenplay is a very strange form of creative writing. Structured
like a (stage)play, flowing like music, consisting of 120 pages or
so of dialogue, and a few sparse directions that will act as the
creative impetus for everything that is to come." - Frank Pierson,
Screenwriter
So you see from the aforementioned quote that I value the script, it's
what gets the ball rolling when an interested producer gets hold of
it. I believe Sternberg's views are not representive of most directors, who don't come across nearly as arrogant and self-serving.
In fact, I think if he watched his own films with a objective eye, they would belie him to
some extent - a film with little relation to a script is visual chaos. However, a
script is certainly not sacrosant, it is altered, deleted, rearranged, rewritten, etc.
in a lot of ways by producers, directors and even by actors sometimes
throughout the production process.
As for the quality of films in general, it's a wonder that as many
good films are made as there are, simply because of the large number
of varying people who can make or break a film over the several years
it takes for such multi-million dollar projects to be accomplished.
Lots and lots of risk involved, everything ultimately falls on the
producer, who must see the whole project through from beginning to
end, and he or she is constantly under pressure from the studio to get
it done ON TIME and WITHIN BUDGET.
One more point concerning the scripts -How many bad Shakespeare's adaptations have you seen?
My answer is -A lot!
:))
The statement you quoted is a commmonplace not only with respect to film but also with respect to "serious" fiction. Many, many works of serious fiction are "about" the telling of the story as well as the story itself: Moby Dick, The Canterbury Tales, Ulysess, to name just a few.With respect to movies, the statement is correct insofar as shot setup, camera angle, lighting, music soundtrack etc. affect the film. However, the screenwriter supplies one additional crucial element in a film, besides the narrative -- the dialog. Unless your taste in flim runs to pretty pictures and great music -- Claude Lelouc's "A Man and a Woman" (1967) and "Elvira Madigan" (1968) come to mind -- dialog is extremely important and can make or break a film.
A good example of this is the first three Star Wars movies. The first one, written and directed by George Lucas has absolutely ridiculous dialog. Despite that, the inventiveness of Lucas and his gang with all of the creatures, etc. carries the film.
The second and third installments were directed by other directors, and Lucas had a co-author on the screenplay. The narrative, I am sure, is all Lucas; but the dialog is much better.
The recent Phantom Menace, is I believe, all Lucas -- and it shows. By now, we are all familiar with the dimensions of Lucas' imagination; and he really doesn't show us anything new -- except that progress in computers now contributes to even more impressive effects.
Maybe the films of the 40s and the 50s, with their split-second repartee, are too "talky" for modern tastes. But the screenwrite writes the dialog and that IS important.
RBB --
"Still getting the wax out of my ears."
...a great movie with every word (after the intro) written long ago by a scenarist named Chekhov.*If* a movie relies, like a play, on dialog, writing is of supreme importance, narrative or no.
From "From Script to Screen: The Collaborative Art of Filmmaking" by
Linda Seger & Edward Jay Whetmore, page 43: "Frank Pierson's final
comments reflect his vision of what the very best scripts must accomplish as they offer various possibilities in the context of the
collaborative process: 'It is the writer's job to force the director
and actor out of merely reproducing a text and into finding themselves in it, thereby allowing some possiblity of creating art.
The text is meant to be and must be constructed to be interpreted.
This is the true meaning of collaborative art.' "
nt
Agreed, there are some movies in which the writer seems more dominant
than the director. This especially seems to be the case in the films scripted
by Paddy Chayevsky, in which the dialogue tends to dominate the
visuals.
Is it a paperback with a still from a Woody Allen movie on the cover?
2nd Edition.
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