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212 A PRACTICAL MANUAL OF SCREEN PLAYWRITING
another, more specific technique for presenting a character's inner thoughts. It makes use of what is known as "inner monologue" or "stream of consciousness."
From Shakespeare's day to the Victorian era, this inner monologue was given in the form of soliloquy "asides." That is, all stage action was stopped to permit the inner monologist to turn his head from the other characters and give verbal vent to his thoughts.
Today such crudities have been mercifully junked. Instead, dependence is put on the pictorial action that is the result of causative thought. But, at certain times, spoken inner thoughts have been portrayed as such, while all action stops, and the character, in closeup, meditates on his mental woes. O'Neill's stage play Strange Interlude was one long series of such interior monologues. The technique was carried over into the screen play. The result was a picture that was as jerky as a horse's fly-pestered haunch. When the characters were "acting" it moved, but when they "thought" it stopped completely.
Use stream of consciousness sparingly. The best advice regarding the inner monologue is this— don't use it. But if you must, use it correctly. Use it as James Joyce did in his book Ulysses. Study his techniques in giving the thought processes of Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. Make especial note of his broken speeches.
The Russian director Eisenstein foresaw great possibilities for motion pictures in Joyce's interior monologue devices. But he was aware of the fact that, unless skill and aptitude were used in portraying these rambling inner monologues, the result would be nothing more than an action-stopping, theatrical soliloquy.
Memory recall thoughts. There are certain times, however, when a memory recall may be injected into a script with excellent effects. If a certain graphic phrase or sentence is to be remembered by the character, it may be given— usually through an electronic filter— as a sort of off-stage voice. A character may have been gibed by another character, with a remark such as "You're weak. You'll never do it!" Some time later, when the gibed character is about to do what he had been told he could never do, the memory recall of the giber's voice, through filter, mockingly calling out, "You're weak! You'll never do it! You're weak! You'll never do it!" can be inserted