Written for the Screen

Written for the Screen establishes the status of the motion-picture screenplay as a literary text. It introduces a text-type which is situated on the threshold of performance – to an even greater extend than drama – and, as a written text, has therefore been neglected by both film and literary studies. The volume addresses the question of film authorship and sets out the unique conditions of screenplay production and reception. Written for the Screen outlines the genre’s constituent features and demonstrates the cinematic potential for dialogue, characterization, perspective, time structure, setting, color, sound, music, montage and mise-en-scène contained in the screenplay text. The screenwriter is seen as a creative and stylistically versatile artist who anticipates the range of possibilities which his/her text represents for the final film. The selection of scripts covers U. S. American screenplays from the early sound film to the 1990s and encompasses a variety of genres from the American cinema. Many examples, both from well-known screenplays and from others which have remained unpublished and even unproduced, illustrate the function and aesthetics of this hitherto quite unknown text-type.