Film technique and film acting : the cinema writings of V. I. Pudovkin (1954)

2 PUDOVKIN only to give a general, primitive outline of the action. The whole work of detailed " filmic " adaptation is an affair of the director. This is entirely false. It should be remembered that in no art can construction be divided into stages independent of one another. Already that very general approach involved in the fact of a work being thought out as a substantial future presupposes attention to possible particularities and details. When one thinks of a theme, then inevitably one thinks simultaneously, be it hazily and unclearly, of the treatment of its action, and so forth. From this it follows that, even though the scenarist abstain from laying down detailed instructions on what to shoot and how to shoot it, what to edit and how to edit it, none the less a knowledge and consideration of the possibilities and peculiarities of directorial work will enable him to propose material that can be used by the director, and will make possible to him the creation of a, Jilmically expressive film. Usually the result is exactly the opposite — usually the first approach of the scenarist to his work implies in the best cases uninteresting, in the worst insurmountable, obstacles to filmic adaptation. The purpose of this study is to communicate what is, it is true, a very elementary knowledge of the basic principles of scenario work in their relation to the basic principles of directorial work. Apart from those considerations specifically filmic, the scenarist, especially in the field of general construction, is confronted with the laws governing creation in other allied arts. A scenario may be constructed in the