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THE SCRIPT 247
in many theatres, thus demonstrating that the play has an existence of its own apart from the performance. The film on the contrary mostly absorbs the script completely so that it is not preserved as an independent object which could be used again for a different film production. In most cases it is not available in print; it is not yet an accepted custom to publish scripts for reading.
The film script is an entirely new literary form, newer even than the film itself, and so it is scarcely surprising that no books on the aesthetics of literature mention it as yet. The film is fifty years old, the script as a literary form only twentyfive at most. It was in the twenties of this century, in Germany, that specially interesting scripts first began to be published.
In this again the film slavishly copied the development of the stage. There had been highly developed and popular theatre, there had been great playwrights for centuries before plays began to be written down and made available for reading outside the theatre. In ancient Greece, in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance the written play was always a product of a later differentiation. The drama began with ritual or improvisation, or was born on the stage itself out of the permanent characters of the commedia delV arte. The stage is a much older thing than the play. It is well known that Shakespeare's plays were pieced together later from the parts written out for the actors.
In the same way the film is much older than the script. 'Much' here means about twenty years — but that is nearly half of the whole history of the film.
When the film began, there was no script; the director improvised each scene on the set, telling each actor what to do during the next shot. The sub-titles were written and cut in later.
The film script was born when the film had already developed into an independent new art and it was no longer possible to improvise its new subtle visual effects in front of the camera; these had to be planned carefully in advance. The film script became a literary form when the film ceased to aim at literary effects, planted itself firmly on its own feet and thought in terms of visual effects. The picture sequences of the photo