Between ideology and literature: the discussion of screenplays in the USSR in the 1930s

Abstract

The essay deals with the gradual cessation of discussions of the theory of the iron (rigid) screenplay (championed by Vladimir Sutyrin and Mikhail Bleiman) and the theory of the emotional screenplay (developed by Sergei Eisenstein and Aleksandr Rzheshevsky) As these two theories were discussed by very different personalities, their institutional or group identification is complicated. In the second half of the 1930s, Boris Shumyatsky and Bella Kravchenko developed the concept of the ideological screenplay. The main apologist of the ideological screenplay theory was Valentin Turkin. He expounded it in the book The Dramaturgy of Cinema in 1938. The same historical period saw the development of the practice of publishing scripts in and periodicals and as books, as well as the phenomenon of recording screenplays from films.
 Turkin stood on a radical literature-centric position: "The film can be better or worse than the screenplay, but there is a screenplay next to it with which it can be compared. ... With this screenplay, you can make a picture again and again. Finally, it can be printed, brought to the attention of the viewer, give the viewer the opportunity to compare the film with the screenplay, and read the screenplay without watching a movie .... The screenplay can and must be always a verifying artistic document". If the screenplay expressed the ideology of the film, then it was not only an independent but also a more important work than the film itself.
 The screenplays specificity developed in three stages: 1) the prevalence of the iron screenplay in the 1920s; 2) the fashion for the emotional screenplay and the beginning of the publication of screenplays in periodicals and in book form; 3) the formation of the concept of the ideological screenplay. In the Soviet culture of the 1930s, literature was considered as the primary source of ideas. Other arts played the role of copies, dramatizations, interpretations, etc. Moreover, in a number of statements, although it appears to be the goal of screenwriting, the film already exists as something that a screenwriter can write down with a certain degree of precision and excitement. The research of the genesis of the ideological screenplay conducted for this essay has been based on rare periodicals and the archive of the All-Russian Society of Playwrights and Composers (Vseroscomdram). Numerous examples cited in the essay demonstrate the features of literature-centric thinking. And such materials as articles published in periodicals and lively discussions provide well-known patterns with vivid details.