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CINEMA QUARTERLY
Volume 3, Number 2
WINTER
1935
THE SCENARIO AGAIN. The publication in book form of the scenario of The Private Life of Henry VIII again raises the question of the function and scope of the scenarist in relation to direction, cutting and the whole scheme of production. In his introduction to the present volume* Ernest Betts, film critic of the "Sunday Express," claims that the publication of Henry VIII introduces a new form of literature. He also denies any knowledge of the meaning of "true cinema." These statements, taken together, are symptomatic of much that is wrong with cinema to-day — an inability to escape from the narrative form of literature and an unconcerned ignorance of the true nature of film form.
If the function of the scenarist is to create the film on paper and of the director to re-create it on celluloid, it would appear that either the one is being denied his rightful recognition as the real progenitor of the production or the other is being given undue credit for work which is interpretive rather than creative. This is more or less the case, except that the scenarist, being a writer rather than a visual artist, often lacks ability in the use of plastic imagery and expressive sound, which the director with a real understanding of the powers of his medium would employ in preference to the wordiness of literary narration. In actual practice the director has the power to alter the script as he thinks fit; but a work conceived as a whole by one creative imagination cannot be altered by another, working on a totally different plane, without disastrous effects.
The separation of scenario-construction and direction into two different functions is an artificial one, introduced originally because the first producers were showmen or technicians who could no more conceive a story than they could act the juvenile lead. The system is continued partly out of habit and partly because most of the original producers are still in control of the studios. The accepted idea that the film is a "collective" art is also responsible for a continuance of the convention. The production of a film undoubtedly demands team work. So does the erection of a building. But without
* London: Metheun, 3s. 6d. 67