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PALGRAVE STUDIES IN SCREENWRITING

The Modernist
Screenplay
Experimental Writing for Silent Film

Alexandra Ksenofontova
 Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting

Series Editors
Steven Maras
Media and Communication
The University of Western Australia
Perth, WA, Australia

J. J. Murphy
New York, NY, USA

Eva Novrup Redvall

Department of Media, Cognition and Communication
University of Copenhagen
Copenhagen, Denmark
Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting is the first book series committed to the
academic study of screenwriting. It seeks to promote an informed and crit-
ical account of screenwriting and of the screenplay with a view to under-
standing more about the diversity of screenwriting practice and the texts
produced. The scope of the series encompasses a range of approaches and
topics from the creation and recording of the screen idea, to the processes
of production, to the structure that form and inform those processes, to
the agents and their discourses that create those texts.

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14590
 Alexandra Ksenofontova

The Modernist
Screenplay
Experimental Writing for Silent Film
Alexandra Ksenofontova
Freie Universität Berlin
Berlin, Germany

This project was funded by the Excellence Initiative of the German Federal and
State Governments, and completed at the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of
Literary Studies at Freie Universität Berlin.

Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting

ISBN 978-3-030-50588-2 ISBN 978-3-030-50589-9 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50589-9

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
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retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
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The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
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Cover image: Alexandra Ksenofontova

Cover design by eStudioCalamar

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgments

The first time I read a screenplay was in 2010; ever since, I have talked
about screenplays with many scholars, students, colleagues, and friends.
All of them showed genuine interest in the subject, and this interest made
this book possible. Each and every one of you has my deepest gratitude.
Having read that screenplay in 2010—it was the book publication of
the script by Wim Wenders and Peter Handke for the film Wings of Desire
(Der Himmel über Berlin, 1987)—I thought it would be interesting to
write a term paper about it. My advisor professor Maya Volodina was so
supportive of the idea that I ended up writing not only a term paper but
also my diploma about the screenplays for the films directed by Wenders.
I am extremely grateful to professor Volodina for her encouragement,
without which the rest would not have happened.
Incidentally, I then moved to the city where the action of the script
by Wenders and Handke takes place—to Berlin. Here, I dived into
the history of screenwriting thanks to the wonderful library collection
of Die Deutsche Kinemathek and their extremely helpful and friendly
staff, especially Michael Skowronski. The result of my research at Die
Deutsche Kinemathek was a master’s thesis about German silent screen-
plays. Writing that thesis was only possible because during my studies,
I was once again lucky to encounter amazing scholars who understood
and encouraged my interest in the subject: Professor Melanie Sehgal and
Dr. Andree Michaelis-König. They not only advised and supported me
throughout my studies, but also wrote incredibly thoughtful reviews of

v
vi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

my thesis, which made me realise that there was much more to explore in
the domain of screenwriting history. Professor Sehgal and Dr. Michaelis-
König seemed to share my opinion: they both also wrote me posi-
tive letters of recommendation when I decided to apply for a Ph.D.
programme with a project on silent screenwriting. For this, and for their
reassuring guidance, I am immensely grateful.
This book grew from the Ph.D. thesis I wrote in the following years at
the Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies; the incredible
people who work, teach, and study at the FSGS helped me conduct my
research and start writing this book. Before the interview for the Ph.D.
position, I had to approach the professors whom I wanted to be my
advisors in case I got accepted, and that was when I first felt the excep-
tionally friendly and supportive atmosphere of the FSGS. PD Dr. Irina
Rajewsky and Professor Georg Witte were both enthusiastic about my
project proposal, and fortunately agreed to be my advisors. After I was
accepted, they guided me for the entire duration of the programme with
patience and care; I shall always be indebted to them for it.
An important part of the Ph.D. programme were weekly meetings with
my fellow Ph.D. candidates, where we discussed each other’s projects and
gave and received feedback on our writing. Anna Luhn, Simon Godart,
Daniel Zimmermann, Eva Murasov, Jennifer Bode, Milena Rolka, Laura
Gagliardi, and Kurstin Gatt—I could never image a better group to spend
three years with than you guys, and I am very thankful for your thoughts
and comments on my project. The chairpersons of our weekly meetings
also gave vital feedback on my research; for it, I am especially grateful
to Professor Jutta Müller-Tamm, Professor Irmela Krüger-Fürhoff, and
Professor Cordula Lemke. I could have never enjoyed the unique climate
of the FSGS and the full scholarship it offered to its Ph.D. candidates
without the support of: the School’s managing director Dr. Rebecca Mac;
the research coordinator Dr. Jeanette Kördel; the administrators Nina
Maßek, Claudia Ziegler, and Anita Alimadadi; and many others. Their
help in all organisational matters and beyond was invaluable.
When one deals with a previously neglected genre such as the screen-
play, there is much material to dig up. On this quest, I got help from
the staff of the Deutsche Kinemathek; from Timothy Shipe at the Inter-
national Dada Archive; and from Yana Igdal who photographed for me
the book I almost lost hope of finding. Many thanks to all of you! My
language editor Jaclyn Arndt did an outstanding job proofreading my
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii

thesis; working with her was by far the most rewarding editing experi-
ence I have ever had. The members of the Reading Committee made my
thesis defense a truly enjoyable event; for this, I thank Professor Jutta
Müller-Tamm, Professor Elisabeth K. Paefgen, Leonie Achtnich, and my
advisors PD Dr. Irina Rajewsky and Professor Georg Witte.
During the three years that I spent working on the project, I had
the chance to present my research at several conferences; three of them
were the yearly conferences of the Screenwriting Research Network. I am
deeply grateful to the members of the SRN for showing keen interest
in my work. It was also at one of the SRN conferences that Steven
Maras brought the book series Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting to my
attention. Without Steven, this book would not exist. He supported me
with constructive, indispensable feedback throughout the entire process
of writing and rewriting the book and preparing it for publication; I
am greatly indebted to him for all his help. Eva Novrup Redvall and
J. J. Murphy also gave reassuring and helpful assessments of the project,
as did anonymous reviewers from Palgrave; I sincerely thank them for
their input. The work of the editorial team from Palgrave—Julia Brockley,
Emily Wood, and Lina Aboujieb—is beyond any praise.
My last word of gratitude goes to my family, who has been there for
me at all times, and especially to my partner Alex Battaglia for being the
first, exceptionally thoughtful and caring reader of this book.
 Contents

1 Introduction 1

2 Reconciling the Functional with the Literary 25

3 Early Script Publications: Make It Look Like

“Literature” 45

4 The French Poetic Screenplay: Surrealism and Other

Transformations 65

5 Silent Screenwriting in Russia: For and Against

the Orthodoxy 91

6 The Weimar Screenplay: “Expressionism” and Literary

Adaptations 111

7 Modernist Screenwriting and the Crisis of Reason 131

8 Anti-mimetic Screenwriting 159

9 The Crisis of Language and the Rhythmic Screenplay 193

ix
x CONTENTS

10 Conclusion 223

Index 235
 List of Figures

Fig. 3.1 Beginning of the script Administrative Ecstasy

(Administrativnyy vostorg ) by Leonid Andreyev, published
in his complete works in 1913 58
Fig. 3.2 Beginning of the script Love of the State Counselor (Lyubov’
statskogo sovetnika) by Yevgeni Chirikov, published in the
journal Pegas in December 1915 61
Fig. 8.1 Fragment of the script Dynamic of the Metropolis (Filmváz.
A nagyváros dinamikája) by László Moholy-Nagy,
published in the journal MA in 1924 173
Fig. 8.2 Beginning of the script Dynamic of the Metropolis
(Dynamik der Gross-stadt ) by László Moholy-Nagy,
published in the Bauhaus book Malerei. Fotografie. Film in
1927. Courtesy of Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg 174
Fig. 8.3 Fragment of the script Dynamic of the Metropolis (Dynamik
der Gross-stadt ) by László Moholy-Nagy, published in the
Bauhaus book Malerei. Fotografie. Film in 1927. Courtesy
of Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg 175
Fig. 9.1 Scenes 2 and 3 of the script New Year’s Eve (Sylvester) by
Carl Mayer, published as a separate book in 1924 196
Fig. 9.2 Fragment of the script October (Oktyabr’ ) by Sergei
Eisenstein and Grigori Aleksandrov, published in
Eisenstein’s collected works in 1971 212

xi
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This book is about film screenplays and about one of the most exceptional
epochs in the history of literature—the epoch of modernism. In particular,
this book is about the connection between the two. It gives the screen-
play a place in literary history that is rightfully its own, and highlights the
role literary context played in the history of screenwriting. In doing so,
the book aims to restore the possibility of reading screenplays as literary
works in their own right. This possibility has been repeatedly compro-
mised in the course of a century-long debate on whether the screenplay
is a functional or a literary genre. I do not hope to end this debate, but
to give it a new direction by showing that the question asked has been
the wrong one: What matters is not whether the screenplay is a functional
or a literary genre, but how and why we read screenplays. In fact, what
matters even more, is that we read screenplays. But wait, “we” who?
This book is meant primarily for screenwriting researchers—a growing
international community that exists at least since the Screenwriting
Research Network was established in 2006. At the same time, it is
meant for non-academic and academic readers, especially for scholars of
modernism, who may have never read a screenplay or have stumbled
upon one and are not sure how to approach it. Should one compare the
screenplay to the film made on its basis? Or should one imagine them-
selves in the shoes of a filmmaker? Or should one try and read the film
script as one reads a novel or a play—and what does this mean exactly?

© The Author(s) 2020 1

A. Ksenofontova, The Modernist Screenplay,
Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50589-9_1
2 A. KSENOFONTOVA

These are the questions guiding the first two chapters of this book—how
we can read screenplays and why it matters. I propose an approach to
reading film scripts that regards them both as texts embedded in film
production and as potential literary works. The rest of the book puts this
approach into practice. Exploring modernist screenplays from the 1920s,
I show that film scripts require different kinds of attention, but also that
they are worthy of attention in the first place. Across the pages of this
book, the reader will encounter many new names but also many familiar
ones: Antonin Artaud, Bertolt Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Sergei Eisenstein,
Abel Gance, Maxim Gorki, Thomas Mann, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Romain
Rolland, Viktor Shklovsky—the list could go on and on. All these authors
wrote fascinating screenplays that you can borrow from a library, buy at a
book shop, or read in digital editions; this book will show how and why
you can read them.1

Reading Film Scripts

So what sort of a thing is a screenplay? On the most general level, screen-
plays belong to the ever-growing category of scripts that serve as a model
or prototype for something. A manuscript—the original sense of the word
“script”—is the basis for a printed publication; a call centre script is the
prototype of a conversation; a behavioural script is the model of a social
situation; a programming script is the basis for operations of computer;
in the psychological theory of Eric Berne, a script is roughly the scheme
of an individual’s life formed in their childhood; and in the novel The
Bone Clocks (2014) by the British writer David Mitchell the Script is the
model of the entire human history. A separate category of scripts, which
includes screenplays, can be subsumed under the term “notations”; such
scripts serve as prototypes for artworks—comics, theatrical performances,
operas, video games, TV shows, films, and so on.
All scripts respond to the need of planning or preparing something
else—an artwork, a conversation, a life, etc.; this is their primary function
and their only common feature. Scripts can assume different forms—
material or immaterial, textual or non-textual; they are embedded in
different sociocultural contexts and involve a different number of agents,

1 Those readers who would like to (re)read some of these film scripts right away can
find a full list of published silent screenplays in English, French, German, Italian, and
Russian in Ksenofontova (2020).
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

from one to hundreds. I take film scripts to be material and predominantly

textual artefacts, by contrast to other materials used in film produc-
tion such as storyboards, mood boards, etc. Although all film scripts are
texts, there is no formal textual feature common to all film scripts ever
written: Some of them are written like short stories, others look more
like theatrical plays, and others are indistinguishable from lyric poetry.
Common to all film scripts is only the fact that they respond to the situa-
tion of film production, to use the terminology common among scholars
of rhetoric, to which I return below.
Because screenplays are written in response to the situation of film
production, they can be used in this situation in certain ways. In partic-
ular, the screenplay allows for streamlined planning of production in terms
of finances, logistics, and equipment; it serves as a guideline for actors,
camera operators, editors, and other members of the film crew and opti-
mises communication between them; and it outlines the idea of the film,
towards which the collaborative effort is directed. Of course, not all film
scripts are actually used in film production. Moreover, film scripts can
respond to the potential situation of film production in different ways:
some scripts anticipate it, and others reject it—they are called closet
screenplays. In some historical cases, we do not even know for sure if
a text relates to the situation of film production or not: we cannot ask the
author, we have little or no contextual information, and as I mentioned
earlier, there are no formal features that could definitely indicate if a text
is a film script or not. In such cases, the fourth member of the quartet
that defines the textual meanings—the author, the context, the text itself,
and the reader—plays solo: It is the reader who decides, whether or not
they read the text as a response to the situation of film production.
To give this statement more substance, let us conduct a thought exper-
iment. Let us imagine an unpublished manuscript of a short story that
we know nothing about—neither who wrote it, nor under what circum-
stances it ended up in our possession. It is written in present tense (as
screenplays often are) and describes only visually conceivable events (as
screenplays often do). We have the ability to decide whether we read it
as a film script or as a short story; the essential question is, what does
our decision change? If we decide to read the manuscript as a short
story, we would try to experience it—emotionally, in our mind’s eye, or
even physically, depending on the reading practices we have learned and
prefer. At the same time as we experience it through reading, we would
ask the question of what the story means. The question of meanings
4 A. KSENOFONTOVA

and/or the question of how texts enable certain experiences constitute

the core of literary reading and of literary criticism in general; contem-
porary literary criticism usually presumes a pluralism of possible meanings
and experiences that a text can enable.
If we read the manuscript in our possession as a film script, we would
probably ask the same questions; at the same time, we would addition-
ally read the manuscript as a response to the situation of film production.
Our focus would therefore shift to other kinds of questions: Can we plan
a film production based on this text? What kind of production does the
text envisage? Does the text convey a clear idea of the film we want to
make? Can other participants of the production form an idea of their
contributions based on what the text describes? The type of reading that
focuses on such questions can be called rhetorical or pragmatic reading,
because the questions of how a text works in a certain situation preoc-
cupy the disciplines of pragmatics and rhetorical criticism. However, for
the purpose of this book I choose the term “functional reading,” as it is
broader and not bound to any specific field of knowledge (though it is,
of course, problematic in its own ways, which I discuss at the end of this
chapter).
It seems logical to assume, as Ted Nannicelli does, that “reading the
screenplay qua literary work and reading the screenplay qua production
plan are mutually compatible” (2013, 192); moreover, “one’s reading
(and successful use) of a screenplay in the production process actually
requires one to read it as a literary work” (201). If we do not under-
stand the meaning of the script—why characters act in certain ways, why
events happen the way they do, why it describes certain details and leaves
out others—it would perhaps be difficult to turn the script into a film.
Or would it? One of the most famous (and fictitious) anecdotes in the
history of screenwriting asserts that Thomas H. Ince, father of the Holly-
wood studio system and the pioneer behind “assembly-line” filmmaking,
would stamp the screenplays he approved for production with the instruc-
tion “shoot as written.”2 This instruction implies that the readers of the
screenplay—directors, actors, camera people, and other members of the

2 Like much other anecdotal evidence originating from an early book on the history of
US cinema, Lewis Jacobs’s The Rise of the American Film (1939), the existence of Ince’s
stamp is unverifiable and has long been considered a mythical exaggeration (Azlant 1980,
166–67).
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

film crew—should not question the meaning of the script, but read it only
in regard to what it says about film production.
The anecdote about Ince’s stamp encapsulates the limitations that can
be imposed on the reading of film scripts in film production, especially in
studio productions with a strict separation of conception and execution
(see Maras 2009, 21–23). At the stage of execution, the script is not to be
read as a literary work, because such reading would presume a multiplicity
of possible meanings and the power of the reader to interpret the script in
their own way. Moreover, in commercial studio productions screenplays
are usually written so as to minimise the ambiguity of meaning and elim-
inate the need for interpretation; screenwriting conventions ensure that
the screenplay is univocal and cannot be misread.
The pervasive separation of conception and execution in film produc-
tion and the dominance of screenwriting conventions are the reasons why
I contend that most readers of screenplays today prioritise the functional
reading over the literary. In theory, readers may consider experiencing and
interpreting screenplays in their own right just as important as reading
them in regard to film production, but in today’s practice they rarely
do. Our readerly expectations and reading strategies, in turn, influence
how publishing, teaching, awards, and other cultural institutions treat
screenplays. Take, for instance, the fact that the juries of many prestigious
awards for the best screenplay are not obliged to actually read screen-
plays; it suffices if they have seen the film. To consider whether and how
this imbalance of reading practices can be approached, we can think of
different readings in terms of interpretive communities.

Interpretive Communities
The idea of interpretive communities has been famously introduced by
the scholar of law and literature Stanley Fish. In different books Fish
gives slightly different definitions of what interpretive communities are,
but the general idea remains more or less stable: interpretive communi-
ties are not simply groups of people, but sets of reading expectations,
principles, strategies, and practices, with which we approach texts (Fish
1980, 171). One and the same person can belong to several interpre-
tive communities and approach one text in different ways; at the same
time, multiple readers can belong to the same interpretive community
6 A. KSENOFONTOVA

and practice similar readings. Manfred Jahn (2001) provides a great illus-
tration of this idea, applying the notion of interpretive communities to
drama studies.
Jahn distinguishes three “schools” of drama theory: they privilege,
respectively, the dramatic text over its production, the production over
the text, and neither. The focus of the first school is on the aesthetic qual-
ities of the play text—the qualities that interpreters foreground in close
readings and describe using expressions such as “‘poetic drama,’ ‘dramatic
poetry,’ ‘drama as literature,’ ‘theatre in the mind’,” and so on (2001,
661). By contrast, the second school of thought sees as the main feature
of a theatrical play not its aesthetic or sociocultural self-sufficiency but
rather its potential realisation as a theatrical production. Consequently,
such interpreters emphasise the intention of production inscribed in the
play and its collaborative authorship; they see the interpretation of plays
as defined primarily by contextual rather than text-immanent factors.
Other “points on the agenda” for this second interpretive community
are “establishing a distinctive discipline” and attacking text-centred theo-
ries for their “academic isolatedness” (661). Finally, the third line of
thought promotes the appreciation of both the play text and the theatrical
performance in their own right; in other words, this third interpre-
tive community reads the play both as a guide for production and as
on par with other literary genres. Correspondingly, “points on [this]
agenda include the rehabilitation of the text as a piece of literature, and
the promotion of a cross-disciplinary exchange between critics, theorists,
and theatre practitioners” (662). This cross-disciplinary exchange and
the fact that the third interpretive community is “the most circumspect
of the three schools” (662) are the most significant advantages of this
middle-ground line of thought.
Jahn describes how a new interpretive community emerged on the
crossroads of two others: it combined the principles of the two existing
interpretive communities, without regarding them as contradictory or
mutually exclusive. Even though their historical and conceptual “weight”
is distributed differently, the various interpretive communities in screen-
writing research are strikingly similar to those Jahn describes for drama
theory. Just like Jahn presents the third interpretive community in drama
studies as the one enabling the most adequate and in-depth understanding
of plays, I submit that screenwriting research could benefit from devel-
oping a third interpretive community that could combine the approach
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

to screenplay as a functional response to the situation of film production

with the idea of screenplay as a literary genre.
The benefit of such middle-ground interpretive community goes far
beyond a more profound reading of screenplays and even beyond the
field of screenwriting studies. After all, the subheading of Fish’s most
famous book reads The Authority of Interpretive Communities —according
to Fish (1980, 171), interpretive communities have significant authority
and power, in particular the power to decide what counts as a text
worthy of interpretation and what does not. For instance, if the screen-
play’s layout, typeface, and format do not fit the contemporary standards,
chances are that today’s film producers will not read the script as such
(or at all). Another great example of the power interpretive communities
have is the historical emergence of the interpretive community that reads
theatrical plays as literary works.
Before the seventeenth-century Elizabethan theatre, theatrical plays
were mostly considered auxiliary texts without any distinct literary value;
they were meant to be read primarily by the actors involved in theatrical
productions. In other words, the dominant interpretive community
prioritised the functional reading of theatrical plays over the literary. For
the purpose of being enjoyed as “post-production” material, plays were
occasionally published as “playbooks” in the comparatively cheap and
small quarto format; it wasn’t until the folio editions of Ben Jonson’s and
William Shakespeare’s works were published in 1616 and 1623, respec-
tively, that the precedent for “drama as literature” was set (see Wall 2006).
These publications indicated a shift towards, and gave power to, the inter-
pretive community that reads and appreciates theatrical plays in their own
right, detached from their productions.
Reinstating the balance between functional and literary reading of film
scripts and empowering a middle-ground interpretive community is thus
not only about interpreting scripts from different perspectives but also
about appreciating the work of screenwriters, making it visible, and chal-
lenging the power of various cultural institutions to decide what counts as
a screenplay and/or literature and what does not. The example of Jonson
and Shakespeare also illustrates that in regard to notations—the scripts
that respond to the situation of producing another artwork—publica-
tion can be a game changer: Because publishing as cultural institution
possesses considerable authority, it has the power to challenge the inter-
pretive communities that see notations as purely functional artefacts.
8 A. KSENOFONTOVA

Published Film Scripts

The argument of publication has been repeatedly voiced in screen-
writing research; problematically, it is often applied in an undifferentiated
way. Barbara Korte and Ralf Schneider argue, for instance, that “as a
published text […] the screenplay definitely seems to have gained foothold
within the literary system” (2000, 104). Nannicelli (2013, 155–57) even
connects the publication of screenplays to the idea that they can be seen
as “completed” literary works. Miguel Mota contends, in a more circum-
spect manner, that “the published screenplay may be more than merely a
‘blueprint’ for another text; it may be viewed more productively instead
as a separate material and cultural entity” (2005, 217). As a matter of fact,
publication as such neither presents a work as completed or incomplete,
nor does it define readerly expectations and interpretive principles—but
the specific context of publication does.
To take a famous example: An ad in a sports newspaper listing the
lineup of a football team for an upcoming match has a functional
purpose—to inform the readers about the lineup—and is likely to be
read as a functional text; the very same text published in Peter Handke’s
collection of poems The Innerworld of the Outerworld of the Innerworld
(Die Innenwelt der Außenwelt der Innenwelt, 1969, 59) encourages and
even requires us to read it as a literary work. Handke’s text is a poem
called “The Formation of FC Nürnberg’s First Team of 27.1.1968”
(Die Aufstellung des 1. FC Nürnberg vom 27.1.1968). This poem is an
example of a literary ready-made—a text that requires different reading
strategies and offers different meanings depending on the context.
The same is valid, to a certain extent, for screenplays. They can be
published in a variety of different contexts: as separate books, in edited
collections, in literary journals, in film magazines, in newspapers, and in
other kinds of press, as examples in screenwriting manuals, as a merchan-
dise to advertise a film before its premiere (a rare case today, but common
in the silent film era), as a merchandise after the film’s premiere, on the
Internet, officially or unofficially, by publishing houses that specialise in
literature and those that don’t, and so on. The kinds of publication that
highlight the functionality of the screenplay in film production are likely
to encourage a functional reading; other kinds of publication invite the
readers to approach the published film script as a literary work. The entire
institution of literary publication is, as Jonathan Culler (2000, 26–27)
remarks, meant to communicate to the readers that the published texts
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

are “worth it”—that is, they can and should be approached with specific
questions and a special kind of attention that a literary reading requires.
This is not to suggest that the screenplays published as books are
aesthetically more valuable or in any other way “better” than those
published, for instance, in screenwriting manuals, or entirely unpublished.
On the contrary, in screenwriting as in literary studies, it is essential to
engage critically with the tendency to canonise already published works
and neglect those that have not been published, a situation frequently
related to gender, racial, and other forms of discrimination. The fact of
publication in a literary rather than industrially defined context simply
indicates that such works already participate in the sociocultural system
of literature. These screenplays have already passed the process of literary
selection—they have been published, translated, republished, and so on.
The published film script is thus a good starting point for a new interpre-
tive community that wants to reinstall the possibility of literary reading
of screenplays on par with functional reading. The literary context of
publication increases the chances that the respective published script is
“worth of” a literary reading, meaning that the script will demonstrate a
pluralism, ambiguity, and complexity of possible meanings.
Publication is, of course, just one of many factors that define what
we expect of the texts and how we read them. Other factors include
the statements of the authors, further contextual details (e.g. whether a
screenplay was actually used in film production), the text itself, the para-
texts (titles, subtitles, prefatory comments, etc.), and our personal reading
background. There is obviously no universal feature valid for all kinds of
literary works ever written that would amount to the sign saying “read this
as literature!”. However, among all the listed factors, publication has been
paramount for the Western modern literature. This is why, to support my
argument that the screenplay has always been both a functional and a
literary genre, I explored only the scripts published in certain contexts:
as separate books, in literary journals, or as part of the collected works
of specific authors. These scripts demonstrate that already in the 1910s,
and especially in the 1920s, the film scripts already made an appearance
on the European literary arena.
One glance at the published film scripts from the silent film era in
Europe suffices to recognise that most of them resemble neither contem-
porary conventional screenplays, nor the conventional screenplays from
the 1920s, such as we know them from the surviving manuscripts and the
research (e.g. Schwarz 1994). The published scripts demonstrate a great
10 A. KSENOFONTOVA

variety of different formats, styles, narrative techniques, and layouts. Some

of these scripts challenge the ideas about what counts as a screenplay and
what does not, foregrounding their distinction from conventional screen-
plays. Other scripts challenge the common ideas about what counts as
literature and what does not, parading their distinction from other literary
publications. Some scripts do both. The works that commit “to raising
fundamental questions about the very nature and being of […] art itself”
(Bray et al. 2015, 1)—be it the art of filmmaking, the art of screenwriting,
or the art of literature—can be described as experimental.

Experimental Film Scripts: The

How and What of Screenwriting
In the intuitive meaning of the term, an experimental screenplay is one
that opposes the norms and conventions of screenwriting, which Ian W.
Macdonald (2013, 10) prominently termed “the screenwriting ortho-
doxy.” Macdonald derived this term from Pierre Bourdieu’s sociological
concept of “doxa” (23–25), and it immediately caught on in research. In
simple terms, screenwriting orthodoxy codifies the “rights” and “wrongs”
of writing a screenplay, determining its appearance, style, and narrative
structure. Incidentally, Fish’s idea of interpretive communities is also
parallel to, and perhaps informed by, Bourdieu’s theory of habitus and
doxa (Buchanan 2010, 252). If readerly expectations and practices define
interpretive communities, then the dominant expectations and practices
determine the doxa—the dominant interpretive community. Saying that
experimental screenplays challenge the dominant interpretive communi-
ties thus amounts to saying that they challenge a significant part of the
screenwriting orthodoxy—the part that defines how we read screenplays.
Compared to the well-established terms “experimental film” and
“experimental literature,” the term “experimental screenplay” has not yet
been widely used in research—for instance, film scholar Scott Macdonald
uses it only once in the collection of experimental screenplays he edited,
Screen Writings: Texts and Scripts by Independent Filmmakers (1995).
Instead, he writes of “inventive texts and scripts independent filmmakers
have written” (11); J. J. Murphy (2019) and Steven Maras (2009) use
the terms “alternative scripting” and “alternative approaches” to screen-
writing; so do Ken Dancyger and Jeff Rush in their practice-oriented
manual Alternative Scriptwriting: Writing Beyond the Rules (1991). All
these terms are sound: Experimental film scripts are always inventive, they
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

are today usually written by independent filmmakers, and they certainly

present an alternative to mainstream and conventional film scripting.
However, I prefer the term “experimental screenplay” for several reasons.
Firstly, it parallels the terms “experimental literature” and “experi-
mental film,” signalling that “experimental screenplay” may be just as
worthy of scholarly and public attention. Secondly, some of the screen-
plays I examine throughout this book were not written as an alternative
to orthodox screenwriting: their authors were either unaware of the
orthodoxy of the time, or this orthodoxy simply did not yet exist in
the strict form that it has today. Lastly, in regard to the scripts that
were written against the dominant norms of screenwriting, the term
“experimental” emphasises that these scripts do not simply present an
alternative choice; they actively “demonstrate the limitations of conven-
tional industry screenplays” (Macdonald 1995, 10–11), undermining and
subverting the existing orthodoxy. Moreover, they can “provide different
ways of thinking about [film] production” (Maras 2009, 129). While
the history of screenwriting orthodoxy draws attention to the industry’s
pursuit of optimisation, experimental screenplays tell a history of misun-
derstandings, conflicts, errors, and inefficacies in film production, which
are paramount in appreciating and studying film as an artistic practice. In
short, experimental screenplays are active agents in the rivalry between
different interpretive communities in screenwriting and filmmaking.
When being challenged, the dominant interpretive communities often
resist and try to discredit the texts and agents that do not fit into their
interpretive framework. In regard to screenplays, this resistance mani-
fests itself, among other things, in the attribute “unshootable,” which is
often applied to screenplays or single elements of the scripts. Symptomati-
cally, different interpretive communities use the term “unshootable” with
different purposes. Screenwriting manuals and “how-to” books, which
focus on the production-related side of screenwriting, call “unshootable”
the elements of screenplays that cannot be immediately visualised and
“executed” in film production. By contrast, literary scholars tend to
call film scripts “unshootable” to highlight their aesthetic self-sufficiency
and “free” the texts in question from any hint at a utilitarian purpose
(e.g. Wall-Romana 2013, 177–204). Adopting the term “experimental
screenplay” is paramount for research, if we accept the possibility that
a text can require a functional and a literary reading at the same time.
By using “unshootable” as the default term for any kind of screenplay
that transcends the normative poetics of screenwriting in a radical way,
12 A. KSENOFONTOVA

we marginalise such screenplays and thereby reinforce the unchallenged

dominance of screenwriting orthodoxy and the existing interpretive
communities.
As literary scholar Martin Puchner (2002, 13–14) demonstrated for
theatrical plays, a text’s quality of being “unstageable” is a matter of
historical contingency rather than a textual feature. “What today is consid-
ered a closet drama because it does not correspond to the general use, the
aesthetic, technical, dramaturgical, and moral possibilities and customs of
theatre or theatrical text, can tomorrow be brought on stage with great
success” (Marx 2012, 293); the logic of this quote is fully applicable to
screenplays and film production. To be clear, I do not deny the existence
of the so-called closet screenplays, i.e. deliberately unshootable scripts;
rather, I argue that both practitioners and researchers tend to ascribe
the quality of being “unshootable” to screenplays arbitrarily, based on
the respective individual’s ideas about what is “shootable” and what is
not. Instead, I propose preserving the label “unshootable screenplays” for
those texts that explicitly identify themselves as such. For example, only
one author from all French surrealist screenwriting I discuss in Chapter 4,
Benjamin Fondane, explicitly characterises his screenplays as unshootable
(Fr. intournable); other surrealist authors composed, in my terminology,
experimental scripts.
Experimental screenplays do even more than question the dominant
ideas about what screenplays are and how they should (not) be written;
they also draw attention to a widespread, historically persisting miscon-
ception about screenwriting, namely that the format and the style of
screenplays are somehow separate from the kinds of stories that screen-
plays tell. Manuals and handbooks on screenwriting tend to give separate
advice on how to write screenplays and what to write about, but hardly
ever reflect on the connection between the two. Some few chapters cover
the style, layout, and formatting commonly used in screenwriting, and
other chapters teach (aspiring) screenwriters how to structure the story,
develop the characters, choose a perspective on the events, etc. As a result,
practitioners, theorists, and even scholars of screenwriting often seem
to be under the impression that these two aspects are not immediately
connected; or, that how the screenplay tells a story is less important than
what it tells. By “how” I mean not only the structure of the story—its
arrangement of time and space, the narrative perspective, and so on—
but also the choice of words, the length and complexity of the sentences,
the way the text is arranged on the page, the way it sounds when read
 1 INTRODUCTION 13

out loud—all those and many other things that constitute the notion of
style. Screenwriting orthodoxy often makes the style and formatting of
the screenplay appear as a container waiting to be “filled” with content,
to the extent that today, some of the rights and wrongs of screenwriting
related to its style and format are simply built into screenwriting software.
Developing unusual writing styles, formats, and narrative techniques,
experimental screenplays show that no story exists as an abstract entity,
transferrable from one medium to another; rather, a story is constituted
by the specific choices made within a certain medium—for instance, a
verbal story is always the words it is told with (as well as many other
choices that come with the medium of verbal communication, written
or oral).3 We may become aware of this fact in everyday communica-
tion, when we are offended by purely chosen words or rightfully insist on
using politically correct terms, as this word choice constitutes the respec-
tive story; critics are always aware of this fact when analysing functional
and literary texts. Yet because screenplays have for so long remained disre-
garded, “invisible” texts, both writers and readers seem to have forgotten
that same rule applies to film scripts as to any other written, especially
narrative, documents: What they tell is how they tell it. Or, in narratolog-
ical terms: The “story” of a script is nothing more than a construct that
we, the readers, abstract from the “discourse” of a given text, from the
totality of words and structural choices.4 More often than not, how a text
is written is exactly what it is written about; and consequently, how the
screenplays are written practically amounts to what kinds of stories they
can and cannot tell.
Scholars of screenwriting have repeatedly voiced concerns that
regarding the screenplay from a literary perspective “takes the script out
of its production context and potentially reinforces a fracture between
conception and execution that impacts on the way we might imagine
creativity and expression, and think about the [film] medium” (Maras

3 In this context, the materiality of the medium can also play an important role; taking
it into account is the next step towards a deeper understanding of how screenwriting
works, both in pragmatic and literary terms. Simon Bovey (2018) has gathered some
highly interesting material on how such factors as paragraph length, page design, graphic
and pictorial elements, and formatting can play a significant role in the ways we read
contemporary screenplays.
4 On the history of and the differences between the two-tiered models of narrative
constitution, including that of story and discourse, see, for instance, Bode (2011, 64–75)
and Scheffel (2014, 509–13).
14 A. KSENOFONTOVA

2009, 5; see also Macdonald 2013, 175; Price 2010, 27–31). However,
an equally important concern is, in my view, that reading the screenplay
only in regard to the situation of film production reduces screenwriting
to the creation of a narrative carcass and separates how something is
being told from what is being told. As a result, the impression may arise
that those aspects of screenwriting orthodoxy that concern, for example,
the style and layout of the screenplay do not also define the screenplay’s
potential of storytelling. Experimental screenplays show that the screen-
writing orthodoxy, especially its rights and wrongs related to style, cannot
and should not be taken for granted, because new ways of storytelling are
impossible without new ways of writing.
Experimentation in screenwriting (as well as in other literary genres)
is thus not only about deviating from the “norm” and challenging the
latter, but rather about drawing attention to the text itself—to the ways
it constitutes meanings, to the process of writing, to its possibilities
and limitations. The subject of experimental screenplays is always the
screenplay itself, and only occasionally and as a result—the screenwriting
orthodoxy. It is therefore hardly surprising that experimental screen-
writing flourished at the time when the screenplay had just appeared as a
genre: that time—the 1920s—encouraged the authors to reflect on what
the screenplay is and can be.

The Modernist Screenplay

In the terminology I propose, an experimental screenplay is a specific kind
of film script, and a modernist screenplay—a specific kind of experimental
screenplay. While literary modernism is usually dated from approximately
1885 to 1945, I focus mostly on modernist scripts written in the 1920s.
There are very few published scripts prior to 1917, and the advent of
sound cinema in 1930 introduced a major break in the consistency of
screenplay as a genre. Moreover, no other epoch produced such a multi-
tude of published experimental scripts as the Roaring Twenties. This study
alone, which explores only screenplays published in book form or literary
journals, mentions over one hundred experimental screenplays composed
between 1917 and 1930 by more than fifty different authors in French,
German, and Russian.
The epoch of modernism is commonly linked to the revolt of art
and the artistic individual against the constraints of the everyday, the
 1 INTRODUCTION 15

mercantile, the reason(able), and, most notably, against mimetic repre-

sentation: of mimetic representation. The results of these revolts are well
known: expressionism, Dada, surrealism, cubism, to name only a few. In
this context, the idea of modernist authors composing screenplays—texts
with a practical purpose, potentially useful to the capitalist, rationalised,
profit-oriented film studios, texts that need to represent in order to be
useful—can be met with scepticism. Consequently, the two main strate-
gies of dealing with modernist screenwriting have so far been to ignore
or to deny it.
The strategy of ignoring modernist screenplays does not need much
commenting: The almost complete absence of research on the screen-
writing of most authors whose work I tackle in this book speaks for itself.
Equally telling is the fact that screenplays are hardly ever mentioned in
the numerous studies that explore interactions between modernist film
and literature. By failing to mention screenplays among modernist literary
works dealing with film, the research implicitly places screenwriting as a
craft or simply a way of earning money in opposition to literary writing
and art making. However, this opposition has little foundation. Prose,
lyric poetry, and plays are not entirely free from mercantile concerns,
since they are embedded in the literary market and theatre industry. Being
embedded in the film industry, screenplays can require the same interpre-
tative effort and grant the same aesthetic and cognitive pleasure as other
literary works. Moreover, as I show throughout the book, many authors
took up screenwriting precisely because it is a practical activity and as such
it opposes the idea that writing has no impact on the “real world.” As
the products of practical engagement with the film industry, screenplays
composed by literary authors clearly testify to these writers’ fight against
artistic and intellectual elitism. This is why, when sending a screenplay
to a journal for publication in 1921, Alfred Döblin emphasised it was “a
thing that I sign with my name” (1970, 116)5 —as many other authors
of the time, Döblin took a stand against the ignoble status screenwriting
had compared to other kinds of literary writing.
Another strategy of dealing with modernist screenwriting is to deny
it by explaining away modernist screenplays as “unshootable,” that is,
not meant to be realised as films, but written only for reading. A major

5 Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.

16 A. KSENOFONTOVA

task of this book is to show that modernist aesthetics is, in fact, compat-
ible with the idea of the screenplay as a functional document potentially
useful in film production. Precisely because screenplay is a document
deeply embedded in the film industry, modernist authors could employ
screenwriting to undermine what they saw as a rationalised and mercantile
industry “from the inside.” In this way, the modernist screenplay became
a kind of double agent—potentially serving the industry, yet simultane-
ously sabotaging it with challenging, seemingly “unshootable” ideas. I
thus suggest abandoning the view on modernist literature as intertwined
with film as a new medium but distanced from the mundane, commer-
cial concerns of the film industry. Instead, I propose acknowledging that
modernists willingly got their hands “dirty” in the film industry, exploring
the subversive potential of screenplay as a simultaneously functional and
literary genre. This is why I argue that both a functional and literary
reading is indispensable for understanding and appreciating modernist
screenplays.
To provide a first impression of how such a combined reading could
work, let us consider the blooming of modernist screenwriting from two
perspectives. Firstly, it can be seen as a consequence of writing in the
absence of screenwriting orthodoxy. The European film industries started
developing their normative poetics of screenwriting even before World
War I, but at the time it was not nearly as widespread as in the second
half of the twentieth century. In the United States, the more or less stan-
dardised “continuity script appears to have functioned […] from around
1913 to the end of the silent era,” whereas in Europe only “the later
1920s saw a movement towards greater industrial stabilization, associ-
ated with both post-war reconstruction and envious glances towards the
industrial efficiency of Hollywood” (Price 2013, 103). In other words,
the screenwriting orthodoxy started developing in Europe only at the
end of the 1920s together with the assembly-line model of film produc-
tion. From the perspective of historical production studies, experimental
screenwriting proliferated in Europe in the 1920s because, in the absence
of a strict orthodoxy, writing any screenplay was by itself an experiment.
A different way of looking at the same phenomenon can be found in
a 1925 special issue of the French literary review Les Cahiers du Mois .
The editors André and François Berge explain their decision to dedi-
cate an entire special issue to screenplays as follows: “It seemed to us
in some ways that a precise and rapid literary genre (as this one can
be) corresponded to a desire of modern thought; and we were not the
 1 INTRODUCTION 17

only ones to have this opinion” (1925, 131). Extending the logic of this
passage to the entire 1920s, one can say that the screenplay answered
some specific interests of modernist thought. Viewing modernist screen-
writing as enabled by the loose conditions within the film industry and as
encouraged by modernist literature, art, and philosophy are two mutually
complementing perspectives.
The same double perspective applies if we consider why so many
experimental screenplays were published in literary journals or in book
form during the 1920s. On the one hand, the European film industries
went through a deep financial crisis after WWI, and the resources for
film production were extremely scarce. Since many experimental scripts
may seem “unshootable,” go outside the mainstream genres, and are
politically challenging, it is hardly surprising that they never went into
production; the authors of these scripts then “compensated” for their
failure in the film industry by publishing the screenplays on the blooming
literary market. At the same time, it can be argued that, precisely
because the correspondences between experimental screenwriting and
some modernist literary experiments were so evident, the literary market
was genuinely interested in this emerging genre, and this interest resulted
in a proliferation of publication.
Just like the modernist screenplay itself, this study attempts to balance
between various methodological poles, taking into account both the
context of the film industry and of literary movements, various modernist
concepts of film and literature, and the materiality of both media. The
present book thus understands itself as a contribution to a middle-ground
interpretive community in screenwriting studies, which builds upon the
methods and knowledge of the existing communities, showing that their
approaches are not mutually exclusive but rather complementary.

The Scope and Structure of This Study

This book explores published modernist screenplays written in French,
German, and Russian; these languages demarcate only the limits of the
study’s scope and corpus, but not of experimental screenwriting. For
instance, the research of Silvio Alovisio (2005) shows that experimental
silent screenwriting also flourished in Italy. It is possible that further
European and non-European cultures did not lack their own share of
modernist screenwriting—exploring it is a task for further research. Even
so, this study does not suggest that experimental screenwriting is universal
18 A. KSENOFONTOVA

to all modernisms, but sees it as a practice conspicuously present across

some of them.
As keen as I was to highlight the experimental screenplays of female
authors, too few are available in published form to provide a focus; the few
texts that I have discovered are discussed in Chapters 3–6. It is my hope
that, by contributing to the general visibility of screenwriting and partic-
ularly its historiography, this study might encourage further publication
of screenplays by female authors and fill this existing gap.
In this chapter I have argued that screenplays can be read from two
different but complementing perspectives: in regard to how they respond
to the situation of film production and in regard to what they mean as
autonomous literary works. I have opted for a middle-ground interpre-
tive community that could combine these perspectives and approach the
screenplay as a simultaneously functional and literary genre. The publi-
cation context and the issues of convention and experimentation are the
key factors that define how readers approach screenplays. This is why I
have contended that published modernist screenplays make the need for
a double, functional-literary reading especially evident.
In Chapter 2 I address two reasons why a middle-ground interpretive
community is reluctant to emerge in screenwriting studies: the seem-
ingly problematic implications of the term “literature” and the so-called
incompleteness problem. I show that the historical “screenplay as liter-
ature” debate implies at least three different concepts of literature, all
of which are normative and have little relation to contemporary literary
criticism. Similarly, the idea of the screenplay as essentially incomplete
implies at least three different understandings of incompleteness, none of
which precludes a literary reading of screenplays. The chapter then shows
how a double perspective on screenplays works in practice—the practice
of reading screenplays and the practice of writing the history of screenplay
as a genre.
The Following Chapters 3–6 construct the main historical narrative
of the book. It details the cultural contexts in which modernist screen-
writing flourished and the literary publications of screenplays emerged.
These chapters are deliberately opposed to the Chapters 7–9, which
are structured according to overarching modernist concerns rather than
cultural-linguistic boundaries. This structure reflects the fact that both the
context of national literatures and the transcultural aesthetic contexts are
defining for the history of screenwriting.
 1 INTRODUCTION 19

Chapter 3 surveys the earliest publications of screenplays in Europe,

discovering their place in the literary field of the 1910s. It argues that
those early publications justified the idea of publishing screenplays by
adjusting their layout and style to those of drama or short prose, thus
highlighting the affinities between screenplays and other literary genres.
Chapter 4 explores the blooming of poetic screenwriting in 1920s France.
I argue that the screenplay became a popular genre among the poets
because the possible transformation of poetic scripts into film opposed
the idea that literature generates no material change in the world. The
desired prospect of the screenplay becoming a film manifested itself in
the motif of fiction turning into reality, ubiquitous in French modernist
scripts. Chapter 5 explores how the screenplay became an important agent
of renewal in post-revolutionary Russian literature. The laconic, non-
figurative language of conventional screenwriting corresponded to the
idea of a “literature of fact,” popular among the Russian avant-gardes.
At the same time, conventional screenplay style brought out the irony
in the politically subversive scripts of the authors who were critical of
the new Soviet regime. Chapter 6 focuses on silent screenwriting in the
Weimar Republic and in Austria. It debunks the myth of so-called expres-
sionist screenplays, and highlights instead literary adaptations and popular
neo-romantic fiction as key literary contexts for German screenwriting.
Even though modernist screenplays developed in very different cultural
contexts, they feature many correspondences, which stem from their
common modernist concerns. This argument is developed in detail in
Chapters 7–9; each takes five published screenplays as case studies. I single
out three overarching phenomena that shaped the screenplay as part of
modernist literature: the crisis of reason (Chapter 7), the crisis of mimetic
representation (Chapter 8), and the crisis of language (Chapter 9). These
common modernist concerns do not neutralise the national specifics but
rather coexist with them, just like the national specifics in turn coexist
with literary programmes of single authors or authorial collectives. The
premise of this book is therefore a plurality of modernisms, which is on a
par with modernism as a distinctive historical epoch.
The distinction between the three crises is admittedly somewhat artifi-
cial and serves primarily the purpose of maintaining the structure of the
book. In fact, all three crises are inextricably linked between themselves
and to the political crisis of liberalism, which is equally central to my
argument. Although the crisis of language is often regarded as part of the
crisis of mimetic representation, I separate them as relating to literature
20 A. KSENOFONTOVA

and visual arts, respectively, because of the distinct implications they had
for screenwriting.
Chapter 7 considers how silent screenwriting responded to the
modernist crisis of reason. It examines screenplays by Philippe Soupault,
Pierre Albert-Birot, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Benjamin Péret, and Bertolt
Brecht. These screenplays refute a purely rational understanding of the
everyday, labour, the body, and human relations, aiming to re-enchant
the overly technical and rationalised world. To this end, the screenplays
draw inspiration and borrow techniques from contemporaneous litera-
ture—from a first-person narrator to free indirect discourse. Employing
unusual writing techniques, these modernist screenplays undermine the
rational practices of film production and with them, the excessive ratio-
nalism of capitalist societies. Chapter 8 examines screenplays that react
to the modernist crisis of mimetic representation, challenging the idea
that art and literature are confined to representing reality. These screen-
plays include works by Fernand Léger, Dziga Vertov, Antonin Artaud,
and László Moholy-Nagy. To put the ideas for their anti-mimetic film
projects into words, these authors came up with unusual aesthetic deci-
sions, such as elliptical writing or an experimental layout. As a result, their
scripts reveal complex and ambiguous meanings, are open to various inter-
pretations, and are inscribed into the realm of anti-mimetic modernist
literature.
Chapter 9 argues that a number of modernist screenplays reacted
to the crisis of language by means of rhythmic screenwriting. Multiple
authors, including Carl Mayer, Louis Delluc, Sergei Eisenstein, and Isaac
Babel, held that verbal language could adequately convey neither indi-
vidual traumatic experiences, nor the complex concepts such as time or
history, nor the specifics of other media, including film. Their rhythmic
screenwriting attempts to overcome these deficiencies of verbal commu-
nication by approximating the various rhythms they discovered in film
and in different facets of human life. Chapter 10 recapitulates the main
arguments of the book, considering why both screenwriting studies and
literary criticism could benefit from viewing the screenplay as a simul-
taneously functional and literary work. I argue that such view amounts
to a pluralist approach to scripts—an approach that recognises different
formats and forms of screenwriting and literary writing. I conclude by
casting a brief look at experimental screenwriting after the transition to
sound film.
 1 INTRODUCTION 21

Three Key Terms

Screenplay and script. Screenwriting researchers have been disputing
whether the term “screenplay” can be used as a general designation of
the genre. Maras (2009, 79–81) has criticised the generic use of the term,
emphasising that “screenplay” refers to a specific script format; this term
became established in the United States only in the 1940s (86). Instead,
Maras uses the more general terms “script” and “scenario,” which imply
neither a specific format nor a specific type of film production. “Screen-
play” is a narrower term than “script” or “scenario.” It emphasises the
connection of the respective text to film or “screen”; more importantly,
the term “screenplay” highlights the importance and the value of the
text, placing it alongside theatrical play as literary genre. The question
of terminology depends, then, on the approach we adopt: in relation to
production context, the terms “script,” “scripting,” and “scenario” are
more accurate as generic terms; in regard to the questions of aesthetics,
literary reading, and the text’s autonomous value, the terms “screen-
play” and “screenwriting” are more advantageous. In accordance with the
middle-ground approach I promote, I use both “screenplay” and “script”
as synonymous generic terms throughout the book.
None of the scripts I discuss feature these terms in their (sub)headings,
simply because none of them were originally written in English. I there-
fore try to translate the original (sub)headings of the screenplays as
accurately as possible, following two principles. Firstly, literal translation
is not always the most suitable. Even the term “scenario,” which seems
to have direct equivalents in French, German, and Russian (scénario;
Szenarium; ccenapi), has in fact a different history and different impli-
cations in each of the languages. Secondly, (sub)headings do not always
reflect the format and the specifics of the text; their meaning can be
deduced only on a case-by-case basis. For example, the screenplay to the
famous film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari,
1920) features the subheading “Fantasy film novel in 6 acts” (Mayer et al.
1995, 47), even though it is what we would today call a master scene
script. (Sub)headings can be very important for interpretation but must
be treated with caution.
Functional and literary reading. The term “functional” is problem-
atic in several regards. My biggest concern as a literary scholar is that the
distinction between functional and literary reading makes it look like liter-
ature has no functions. This is of course not the case. Literary genres can,
22 A. KSENOFONTOVA

in fact, be seen as reactions to specific sociocultural needs; their function

is, then, to articulate these needs and offer solutions to them. Another
major issue is that the screenplay does not only function in the situation
of film production, but it also defines and shapes this situation in turn. I
discuss these two matters at length in Chapter 2. The reason why I use the
expressions “functional reading” and “functional purpose” despite these
concerns is this: These expressions describe not what the screenplay is or does
but how we read it. We can read even the most poetic screenplay focusing
only on how the poetic elements can be interpreted and implemented in
a film production—I call this a functional reading. At the same time, we
can read a screenplay filled with technical indications as a literary work,
exploring the aesthetics of technical indications and their significance in
relation to the story (e.g. is it a story about technology? or perhaps about
film production?). I hold that we can and often should perform both
readings at the same time, regardless of how the screenplay is written;
the functional and the literary therefore do not form an opposition but
are scalable constructs that describe how we approach texts. This book is
about reading screenplays and not about what screenplay or some parts of
it are essentially.
Modernist and modernisms. The term “modernist” comes from
the anglophone tradition; therefore, most authors whose work I
discuss throughout the book did not identify themselves as modernists.
Subsuming different movements and “isms” under the term “mod-
ernisms,” I highlight the common concerns of the authors and texts
I discuss, such as the crisis of reason and the mistrust of language,
and the common solutions they develop in response to these concerns.
These shared features coexist with specific cultural contexts and with
individual views and practices of the authors. The plural form of the
noun—“modernisms”—emphasises this variety of contexts and embodi-
ments of modernist thought. Beside the shared concerns with modernity,
common to modernist writings is experimentation in the sense I have
discussed above—they are conspicuously self-referential, insofar as they
question the nature of writing, reading, and the ways in which the texts
produce meaning. For the purpose of this book, I do not distinguish
between modernisms and the avant-gardes, since the grounds on which
these terms could be distinguished are irrelevant for the scripts I consider.
They are all equally politicised; they are all embedded in the mass culture
of film, as most modernists celebrated film precisely for its popular, “low-
brow” origins; and they were all written in Europe during the 1920s. The
 1 INTRODUCTION 23

term “modernist” also underscores this common historical framework, in

contrast to the terms “experimental” and “avant-garde,” which can be
applied to contemporary art and literature, too.

∗ ∗ ∗

I italicise all script titles regardless of whether they have been published or
not, and regardless of the context in which they have been published. This
editorial decision reflects the approach to screenplays this book proposes.
Titles of novels, plays, and poems are commonly italicised, especially in
studies where many of them are mentioned; because I argue that screen-
plays deserve the same kind of attention as other literary genres, treating
their titles as we treat the titles of other literary works is the logical first
step on the way towards a literary reading of screenplays.

References
Alovisio, Silvio. 2005. Voci del silenzio: La sceneggiatura nel cinema muto
italiano. Milan: Editrice Il Castoro.
Azlant, Edward. 1980. “The Theory, History and Practice of Screenwriting,
1897–1920.” PhD diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Berge, André, and François Berge, eds. 1925. “Scénarios.” Special issue, Les
Cahiers du Mois 12.
Bode, Christoph. 2011. The Novel: An Introduction. Malden, MA: Wiley-
Blackwell.
Bovey, Simon. 2018. “SHOW BUSINESS: The Development of a Language for
the Screenplay.” Paper presented at the 11th International Conference of the
Screenwriting Research Network (SRN), Milan, Italy, September 14.
Bray, Joe, Alison Gibbons, and Brian McHale. 2015. Introduction to The Rout-
ledge Companion to Experimental Literature, edited by Joe Bray, Alison
Gibbons and Brian McHale, 1–18. London: Routledge.
Buchanan, Ian. 2010. A Dictionary of Critical Theory. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Culler, Jonathan. 2000. Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Döblin, Alfred. 1970. Briefe. Edited by Walter Muschg and Heinz Graber. [Vol.
13 of] Ausgewählte Werke in Einzelbänden. Olten, Switzerland: Walter.
Fish, Stanley. 1980. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive
Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Handke, Peter. 1969. Die Innenwelt der Außenwelt der Innenwelt. Frankfurt am
Main: Suhrkamp.
24 A. KSENOFONTOVA

Jahn, Manfred. 2001. “Narrative Voice and Agency in Drama: Aspects of a

Narratology of Drama.” New Literary History 32: 659–79.
Korte, Barbara, and Ralf Schneider. 2000. “The Published Screenplay—A New
‘Literary’ Genre?” AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 25 (1):
89–105.
Ksenofontova, Alexandra. 2020. “Drehbuch im Stummfilm: Eine Bibliographie
[Silent Film Screenplay: A Bibliography].” Medienwissenschaft: Berichte und
Papiere 188. http://berichte.derwulff.de/0188_20.pdf.
Macdonald, Ian W. 2013. Screenwriting Poetics and the Screen Idea. Basingstoke,
UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Macdonald, Scott, ed. 1995. Screen Writings: Texts and Scripts by Independent
Filmmakers. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Maras, Steven. 2009. Screenwriting: History, Theory and Practice. London:
Wallflower.
Marx, Peter W. 2012. “Lesedrama.” In Handbuch Drama, edited by Peter W.
Marx, 293–95. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler Verlag.
Mayer, Carl, Hans Janowitz, and Robert Wiene. 1995. Das Cabinet des Dr. Cali-
gari: Drehbuch von Carl Mayer und Hans Janowitz zu Robert Wienes Film von
1919/20. FILMtext. Munich: Edition Text + Kritik.
Mota, Miguel. 2005. “Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio: ‘The Screenplay as Book’.”
Criticism 47 (2): 215–31.
Murphy, J. J. 2019. Rewriting Indie Cinema: Improvisation, Psychodrama, and
the Screenplay. New York: Columbia University Press.
Nannicelli, Ted. 2013. A Philosophy of the Screenplay. New York: Routledge.
Price, Steven. 2010. The Screenplay: Authorship, Theory and Criticism.
Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
———. 2013. A History of the Screenplay. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Puchner, Martin. 2002. Stage Fright: Modernism, Anti-theatricality, and Drama.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Scheffel, Michael. 2014. “Narrative Constitution.” In Vol. 2 of Handbook of
Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn, Jan Christoph Meister, John Pier, and
Wolf Schmid, 507–20. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Schwarz, Alexander. 1994. Der geschriebene Film: Drehbücher des deutschen und
russischen Stummfilms. Munich: Diskurs Film.
Wall, Wendy. 2006. “Dramatic Authorship and Print.” In Early Modern English
Drama: A Critical Companion, edited by Garrett A. Sullivan Jr., Patrick
Cheney, and Andrew Hadfield, 1–11. New York: Oxford University Press.
Wall-Romana, Christophe. 2013. Cinepoetry: Imaginary Cinemas in French
Poetry. New York: Fordham University Press.
 CHAPTER 2

Reconciling the Functional with the Literary

In the previous chapter, I have argued for an interpretive community that

reads screenplays from both functional and literary perspective. There
are two main reasons why such an interpretive community has not yet
emerged in screenwriting research. The first reason is the reservations
as to what the term “literature” implies: researchers worry that applying
this term to screenplays will entail particular ideas of authorship, canon,
work, and so on. Or, to put it simply, there is a concern that “literature”
will define what the screenplay is and should be. I start this chapter by
showing that the “screenplay as literature” debate has indeed so far been
mostly confined to normative notions of literature. “Normative” means
that these notions establish certain qualities as defining all kinds of liter-
ature, whereas they are actually valid only for a (usually small) part of
it. I argue that contributors to the “screenplay as literature” debate have
largely ignored the role of the readers, and consequently of different inter-
pretive communities, in defining what counts as literature and what does
not. Bringing the readership back into focus allows avoiding too narrow
ideas about what literature is—the ideas that the screenwriting research
worries about. What can and should be criticised, then, is not the term
“literature” itself, but normative ideas of literature.
A second concern for many screenwriting researchers is the idea of
a literary reading: even if we agree that screenplays belong to the broad

© The Author(s) 2020 25

A. Ksenofontova, The Modernist Screenplay,
Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50589-9_2
26 A. KSENOFONTOVA

and malleable category of literature, there still remains a sense that screen-
plays cannot be read in the same way as we read novels or plays. This idea
basically comes down to the so-called incompleteness problem: Screen-
plays, so this idea goes, are constantly being re-written and do not exist
in a final, completed version; therefore, they cannot be read as literary
works. Ted Nannicelli (2013, 159–61) attempted to do away with this
objection by showing that many famous literary works are also literally
incomplete and do not have a definitive version; however, this is not
enough. As I show further in the chapter, there are actually at least
three different understandings of the screenplay’s incompleteness, each
implying a different reading focus. I argue that none of these ideas
precludes a literary reading of screenplays—a reading that, as I have
established in the previous chapter, asks how the screenplay constructs
experiences and meanings beyond the situation of film production.
Having addressed these two possible objections against film scripts as
both functional and literary works, I set out to explore how such a double
perspective actually works in practice. I give an example of how a passage
from a contemporary script can be read from both functional and literary
perspective, and analyse in detail what it means to write the history of the
screenplay as simultaneously functional and literary genre.

“Screenplay as Literature”: The Wrong Debate

The idea to recognise screenplays as literature had a noble and reasonable
origin—it was primarily about appreciating the work of screenwriters. One
of the first people to voice this idea was vaudeville critic and screenwriter
Epes Winthrop Sargent, who wrote in his Technique of the Photoplay in
1912, “conditions move rapidly to the recognition of the scenario writer
as a contributor to dramatic literature” (1912, 3). In the second edition
of his how-to book, Sargent restated, “the Photoplay is by no means the
least of the branches of literary work” (1913, 6). The focus of Sargent’s
statements is on the screenwriter and their labour; his characterisation of
the screenplay as literature implies that the work of screenwriters should
be credited, appreciated, and legally protected in the same ways as the
work of literary authors. Similarly, German writer-director Ewald André
Dupont (1925, 17) characterised the screenplay as “a new literary form”
in the second edition of his screenwriting manual, as he was concerned
with the lack of copyright laws protecting screenwriters (40).
 2 RECONCILING THE FUNCTIONAL WITH THE LITERARY 27

At the same time, both Sargent and Dupont also speak of literature
in a very normative way. Dupont holds that there are separate “laws”
of construction for every literary genre, including the film script (1925,
17); by contrast, Sargent believes that “there are, of course, the broad
basic rules of literary construction and dramatic development, applicable
to all forms of literature” (1913, 7). This idea of a typical literary form or
literary “laws” very soon came to dominate the “screenplay as literature”
discourse in all cultures and languages.
In 1921, the French newspaper Le Figaro introduced the screenplay
Scheherazade (Schahrazade) by the writer and critic Ricciotto Canudo
as a “new literary genre, made up of simple and expressive phrases, in
which our readers will rediscover the evocative skills of the author of”—
then follow the better-known works of Canudo (1921, 4). The newspaper
thus advertises the script to the readers by promising a supposedly “liter-
ary” writing—expressive, evocative, by a famous author. Another example:
in 1925, six screenplays appeared in the special issue of the review Les
Cahiers du Mois ; in the next issue of the journal, the editors quote three
positive reviews of the published scripts. These reviews speak of “lit-
erary scenarios” and “a literary genre”; one critic, specifically, calls the
screenplay a “new literary technique,” specifying that “just like internal
monologue, it [the screenplay] constitutes a new special technique [of
writing]” (Berge and Berge 1925, 250). The emphasis here is also on the
unusual ways of writing supposedly specific to literature.
In 1923, Russian literary critic Viktor Shklovsky—he soon also became
a prolific screenwriter—published a short article entitled “New Literary
Form” that characterises the “scenario” as an emerging autonomous form
of literature. Shklovsky understands scenario broadly, as any “description
of the characters’ movement, their moods and feelings” (1923, 8); exam-
ples are theatrical plays, a music libretto, a film script, and even a few
novel fragments. All these genres, Shklovsky argues, do away with the
“dry stage remarks” (8)—a word combination he repeats twice in his
short article—and thereby become literary. He accordingly emphasises
that the film script Donogoo-Tonka by French writer Jules Romains is
an “expressive” or “vivid” (Rus. yarkiy) literary work (8). Once again,
literary writing is seen as a matter of a certain style and expressivity.
Another interesting example of this kind: in 1929, German writer-
director Hans Kyser called the screenplay “the least known and the least
literary form of literature” (1928–1929, 629). Kyser seems to refer both
to the concept of “literary form” as certain ways of writing and to the
28 A. KSENOFONTOVA

concept of “literature” as independent from “literary form.” In reality,

however, Kyser’s following argument operates exclusively with normative
concepts: a screenplay is a “naked transcript of portrayable visuals,” it
“alludes to nothing and leaves nothing out” (629), which supposedly
makes it unliterary. In this, Kyser’s actual goal turns out to be to criti-
cise the manner in which literary authors write screenplays as opposed to
professional screenwriters.
As any normative characterisation of literary writing such as “expres-
sive,” “evocative,” allusive, etc., is a purely arbitrary matter, it can be used
to argue both for and against screenplay as literature. For instance, in
1936 Russian literary critic and screenwriter Osip Brik adamantly denied
that “the script [is] a literary work, let alone an autonomous one,”
because saw literary writing as a specific way of treating words:

It would be odd for instance to ascribe an architectural plan sketched out in

water colours to the products of fine art. Although there have been archi-
tects who drew their projects with particular care on the assumption that
their pictures would make a good impression on a client poorly-versed in
questions of construction. Just as there are script writers who lavish partic-
ular attention on the elaboration of the literary texture of their scripts
and clearly stake something on “the magic of the word.” But such archi-
tects and script writers are not among the best of their profession. ([1936]
1974, 96)

Brik’s ideas about screenwriting, art, and literature are both very restricted
and restrictive. Neither “the magic of the word” nor “the literary texture”
constitutes the whole of literature. To become literature, words require
the specific attention of the readers to the meanings and experiences they
enable. Style is just one of many textual and contextual factors that define
whether the readers are willing to give the text this specific literary atten-
tion. Brik and other authors who write of a literary “texture,” “form,” or
style merely project their own perception of the scripts and literary works
they have read onto the whole of screenwriting and literature, which
is why their arguments are so poorly founded. There is, of course, no
reason to deny that an architectural plan can be considered an artwork,
or say that architects “who drew their projects with particular care” are
bad architects; the same applies, by extension, to screenplays and screen-
writers. It is worth mentioning that Brik himself did not stick to the
 2 RECONCILING THE FUNCTIONAL WITH THE LITERARY 29

principles he promoted: His own silent film scripts feature a particular

attention to words and stake a lot on their “magic” (see chapter 5).
A screenwriting manual by Brik’s fellow countryman A. G. Chirkov
(1939) suggests that the “screenplay as literature” debate took a decisive
turn after the advent of sound film; yet in reality Chirkov’s manual illus-
trates that the logic of the debate remained exactly the same. In the short
chapter on the “screenplay as a literary genre,” Chirkov writes:

In the epoch of silent film, the screenplay was denied the right to be called
a special, full-fledged literary genre, because literature is the art of words,
and the screenplay featured no work on words. Even if this objection had
the appearance of being convincing in regard to the silent film script, it is
no longer valid in regard to the sound film script. Words, the dialogue in
the script […] is no less important than the dialogue in a novel or even in
a play. (1939, 36)

Chirkov’s claim that the silent screenplay features “no work on words”
by contrast to literature echoes Brik’s idea that literature has something
to do with attention to words. After the transition from silent to sound
film, this idea was reapplied to dialogue in screenplays. Consequently,
screenplays were more and more often compared to theatrical plays based
on the supposed importance of dialogue in both genres. For instance,
the comparison to theatrical plays is key to the famous 1939 article of
Hungarian screenwriter and film critic Béla Balázs, where he states that
only in the 1930s—that is, after the advent of sound film—did the screen-
play become “a specific and independent literary genre” (1939, 113,
original emphasis). His logic: “The film scenario is today a literary genre
just like novel or drama, because it depicts human figures and destinies
in words, in a chronological sequence” (116). Again we find an emphasis
on “words,” even though it remains unclear, why the words of a sound
film script are supposed to be more “literary” than those of a silent film
script.
Unfortunately, the idea that the quality of being literature has to do
with a certain kind of writing seems to have never entirely left the stage.
This idea as at the core of the essay “The Screenplay as Literature,”
written by theatre critic John Gassner in 1943 as the introduction to the
Twenty Best Film Plays collection. Gassner admits to have heavily edited
the screenplays for publication “to assure gratification to the reader, and
to enable us to realise the literary qualities of the text” (1943, vii).
30 A. KSENOFONTOVA

Gassner’s example illustrates that the “screenplay as literature” discourse

gradually became relevant for publishers and editors.1 The practice of
editing screenplays to make them look like other literary genres, such
as that of Gassner, also stems from the idea that literature is bound up
with specific ways of writing.
Later the “screenplay as literature” debate also came into the academic
spotlight as a result of the cultural turn in the humanities. In partic-
ular, the study The Screenplay as Literature by Douglas Garrett Winston
(1973) seemed to provide a new push to the discussion. I say “seemed,”
because despite its title, Winston’s study discusses almost exclusively films
and uses the word “screenplay” as a synonym for the narrative of a film.
While it started to develop in the 1970s, overall the academic “screen-
play as literature” debate was limited to a few scattered articles until the
1990s, at which point it started to gather momentum, particularly in
Germany. Even then, most academic contributions continued operating
with normative ideas of literature. “As a literary form, the screenplay is
distinguished […] by a certain ‘poeticism,’ a specifically ‘poetic’ use of
language,” writes literary and theatre scholar Jürgen Kühnel (2001, 17);
similarly, literary scholar Arno Rußegger focuses on “literary techniques”
(1995, 196) and “literary means” (200) in screenplays. The result of
this focus is an increased attention of German-speaking scholars to one
single author: Carl Mayer. Because his screenplays are usually perceived as
highly poetic, multiple scholars (Faber 1978; Paech 1988; Kasten 1994;
Rußegger 1995) quote his screenplays as examples of literary writing, thus
strengthening the misconception that literature is necessarily bound to
“poeticism.”
To summarise, the “screenplay as literature” debate has been largely
based on very limited ideas about what literature is; the mere formula-
tion “screenplay as literature” seems to imply that we first have to define
literature in order to decide, whether screenplay can count as literature or
not. Barbara Korte and Ralf Schneider seem to be the only proponents of
screenplay as literature who explicitly state that “the ‘literariness’ of a text

1 Film critic Ernest Betts also called the screenplay a new form of literature in his
introduction to the publication of the script The Private Life of Henry VIII in 1934 (see
Price 2010, 24–25). This strategy of prefacing or post-facing publications with “screenplay
as literature” statements continued to be relevant even later—examples are Sam Thomas’s
introduction to Best American Screenplays (1986) and the back cover of the 1989 Film
Scripts collection edited by George P. Garrett, O. B. Hardison Jr., and Jane R. Gelfman
(see Maras 2009, 44).
 2 RECONCILING THE FUNCTIONAL WITH THE LITERARY 31

type is constructed through how it is ‘treated’ by the literary community

and the institutions of literature: publishers, booksellers, reviewers, along
with academic and general readers” (2000, 92). Readers and cultural insti-
tutions (which, in the end, also consist of readers) play a decisive role in
defining what literature is, a role that screenwriting researchers often over-
look. If we recognise this role, it becomes clear that “literature” is neither
a matter of writing style nor a deductible theoretical construct, but a
product of reading practices and principles, which I previously termed
“interpretive communities.” Reading different screenplays—poetic and
not poetic, expressive and “dry,” published and unpublished, with or
without dialogue—as literary works, the readers can redefine the cultural
and malleable concept of literature. The productive and necessary debate
is therefore the debate on the pros and cons, on the practice and theory
of reading screenplays as literature.
Such literary reading of screenplays has been a matter of concern
for contemporary screenwriting research primarily due to the so-called
incompleteness issue. Researchers worry that a literary reading presumes
the completion and/or completeness of the text in question, and there-
fore argue that screenplays therefore cannot be read in the same way as
literary works (Sternberg 1997, 27; Price 2013, 91; Macdonald 2013,
175). I address this concern in detail below.

The Incompleteness Problem

The screenplay’s incompleteness can be thought of in three intercon-
nected but distinct ways: the incompleteness of the screenplay as part of a
film project; the incompleteness of the screenplay’s meaning; and what I
later term the “institutional” incompleteness of the screenplay as opposed
to literary works “completed” in the act of publication. Looking into the
exact nature of these versions of the so-called incompleteness problem, I
argue that none of them precludes us from reading screenplays as literary
works.
One of the first writings that introduces the idea of a certain incom-
pleteness being inscribed in screenplays is at the same time one of the
most quoted articles in screenwriting research: Pier Paolo Pasolini’s “The
Screenplay as a ‘Structure That Wants to Be Another Structure.’” Pasolini
wrote this article in 1965; by that time, his passionate interest in semi-
otics already made him an active participant in the 1960s turn towards
reader-response criticism. Consequently, the article aims to show that
32 A. KSENOFONTOVA

textual interpretation is not about the author or the authorial intention,

but (also) about the meaning-constitutive activity of the reader:

the author of the screenplay asks his addressee for a particular collabora-
tion: namely, that of lending to the text a “visual” completeness which it
does not have, but at which it hints. […] The technique of screenwriting
is predicated above all on this collaboration of the reader. ([1965] 1988,
189)

What Pasolini considers to be “incomplete” and “processual” about

the screenplay—the two qualities being mutually conditioning—is its
meaning. This assessment of incompleteness becomes clear when he
compares the screenplay to the novel: The imagination of a screenplay
reader, Pasolini writes, “enters into a creative phase mechanically much
higher and more intense than when he [sic] reads a novel” (189).
Whether the screenplay facilitates, as Pasolini holds, a more active
visualisation for the reader than the novel and other literary works, is a
question for scholars of empirical aesthetics. On a theoretical level though,
Pasolini’s comparison between a screenplay and a novel implies that
the active role of the reader in constituting meaning generally applies—
supposedly to a greater or lesser extent—to all kinds of literary texts. In
other words, the screenplay is, in regard to how its meaning is produced,
not essentially different from other literary genres.
The reader-orientated approach has long been embraced by literary
theory; today’s literary criticism reduces the meanings of a text neither
to the intentions of a single author nor to the arbitrariness of a single
reader. Instead, various forms of literary criticism take both the histor-
ical production and reception of a given text as a basis on which they
construct the text’s meaning. The scholarly consensus thus presumes a
more complex mechanism of meaning constitution than that implied
by the crude opposition of authorial intention and readerly visualisa-
tion. The semantic incompleteness of the screenplay as conceptualised by
Pasolini thus does not preclude us from reading screenplays as we read
other literary works—on the contrary, it confirms the importance of such
reading.
Almost forty years after Pasolini’s article, Ian W. Macdonald (2004,
90) introduced a different understanding of the screenplay’s incomplete-
ness, suggesting that the screenplay “is not a finished piece of work (in
relation to the screenwork—the finished film).” Implicit in this version
 2 RECONCILING THE FUNCTIONAL WITH THE LITERARY 33

of the incompleteness problem is the denial of the separation between

the conception and execution as two distinct stages of film production
(see Maras 2009, 21–23). Instead, the screenplay is seen as participating
in the collaborative, integrated work in progress, directed towards the
realisation of what Macdonald terms the “screen idea.” This term has
been widely accepted in screenwriting research and is defined in Macdon-
ald’s later study as “any notion held by one or more people of a singular
concept (however complex), which may have conventional shape or not,
intended to become a screenwork” (2013, 4–5). The screen work is thus,
in Macdonald’s terms, the “completion” of the screen idea; the screen
idea is always incomplete, and so is the screenplay as a documentation of
the screen idea.
From the perspective of production studies, Macdonald’s approach
has multiple merits. The screen idea offers common ground for talking
about social and economic processes, institutions, and “orthodoxies and
common norms” involved in film production (6–7). The screen idea
approach also accounts for non-written and non-verbal contributions
to script development, such as storyboards, pre-visualisations, “graphic
novels, short trailers, animations and websites” (Millard 2010, 147).
Finally, the screen idea concept draws attention to the fact that the “final”
version of a film is always constructed from multiple, overlaying, and
mutually transforming readings of development materials—readings that
are performed by different members of the film crew and contribute new
meanings in the process.
However, precisely this strength of the screen idea approach poses a
problem from the perspectives of media theory and literary criticism. By
grouping the screenplay with other materials and technologies used in
film development, the screen idea approach neutralises the media-related
specifics of the screenplay—most importantly, the connection between
what the screenplay tells and how it tells it with the specific means of
written communication. As a result, the screenplay is reduced to a “doc-
ument that outlines the proposed screen narrative” (Macdonald 2013,
10)—in other words, the verbal form of the screenplay is seen as a mere
container for the narrative, which is then transformed in the course of film
development and finally “completed” in another medium, film. Studying
the screenplay with the framework of the screen idea is helpful, if the goal
is to gain knowledge about the genesis of a film project; yet if we want to
read screenplays with view to their own, media-specific aesthetics, mate-
riality, and processes of meaning production, then seeing the screenplay
34 A. KSENOFONTOVA

only as a documentation of the screen idea is scarcely beneficial; any given

script version also allows a literary reading.
“Any given script version” means that the screenplay does not have
to be published to be read as a literary work. However, there is a
strong concern in screenwriting research that it does, and that publica-
tion somehow makes the published script version “fixed” and “complete.”
This is the third sense of the incompleteness problem, which I suggest
characterising as institutional incompleteness, because it presumes that
the cultural institution of publication makes literary works “complete.”
Today, the practice of publishing screenplays still remains minor in
comparison to larger genres such as the novel or lyric poetry. Instead,
screenplays today are usually archived in multiple versions, which belong
to various stages of the project development, and bear traces of (re)writing
by different members of the film crew. Scholars tracing the development
of a film project over time and working with multiple script versions
for this purpose thus tend to oppose the “incomplete” screenplay to a
published literary work.
The supposed institutional incompleteness of the screenplay originates
from two misconceptions: first, that publication makes the published text
“complete” or “definitive”; second, that a text has to be published to be
read as literature. Nannicelli’s study (2013, 148–61) unfortunately rein-
forced both these misconceptions: Trying to show that screenplays can be
read as literary works, Nannicelli argues that publication of a screenplay
“can be a good indication that its writer intends it to be [the definitive
version of the script]” (158). His work implies that a text usually has to be
“completed” through publication to be read as literature, listing several
well-known unfinished literary works as exceptions (159).
To recuperate the argument I made in Chapter 1, literary publica-
tion is a cultural institution that helps readers cope with the complexity
and variety of literature. All literary works are semantically incomplete (in
Pasolini’s sense) and require the interpretive activity of readers to produce
meanings; publication is merely a promise from some readers—editors,
publishers, etc.—to others “that the results of our reading efforts will
be ‘worth it’” (Culler 2000, 27). Does this mean that unpublished texts
cannot be read as literature? Of course not. On the contrary, for a text to
be published in a literary context, certain readers first have to read the text
as a literary work. This is why it sometimes takes a while for a new genre
or a new name to enter the realm of literary publication—remember the
ground-breaking folio editions of Jonson’s and Shakespeare’s plays, or the
Another random document with
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Fig. 80.—Dorsal view of male Diastylis
stygia, × 12. A, 2nd antenna; Ab.6, 6th
abdominal appendage. (After Sars.)

Order II. Cumacea.[96]

The Cumacea are a group of small marine animals rarely attaining

an inch in length, which agree with the Mysidacea in the characters
noted above as diagnostic of the Division Peracarida; they possess,
however, in addition a number of peculiar properties, and Sars
believes them to be of a primitive nature showing relationship to
Nebalia, and possibly to an ancestral Zoaea-like form. They follow a
habit similar to that of the Mysidacea, being caught either in the
surface-plankton or in great depths, many of the deep-sea forms
being blind. They are, however, not true plankton forms, and they
appear to attain a greater development both in point of variety and
size in the seas of the northern hemisphere. The thoracic limbs may
be biramous, but there is a tendency among many of the genera to
lose the exopodites of some of the thoracic legs, an exopodite never
being present on the last few thoracic limbs of the female and on the
last in the male. In the Cumidae the four posterior pairs in both sexes
have no exopodites. The first three thoracic appendages following the
maxillae are distinguished as maxillipedes; they are uniramous, and
the first pair carries an epipodite and a large gill upon the basal
joints. Pleopods are only developed in the male sex.
The flagellum of the second antennae in the male may be
enormously elongated, as in the Atlantic deep-sea species shown in
Fig. 80, so as to exceed in length the rest of the body.
Fam. 1. Cumidae.—No sharp demarcation between thorax and
abdomen. Four posterior pairs of legs in both sexes without
exopodites. Male with five well-developed pleopods in addition to the
uropods. Telson wanting. Cuma, Cyclaspis, etc.
Fam. 2. Lampropidae.—Body-form resembles that of Cumidae.
All the thoracic limbs except the last have exopodites. The male has
three pairs of pleopods. Telson present. Lamprops, Platyaspis, etc.
Fam. 3. Leuconidae.—Body-form similar to above. Male has
only two pairs of pleopods. Mouth-parts peculiar, much less setose
than in other families. Telson absent. Leucon, Eudorella.
Fam. 4. Diastylidae.—Anterior part of thorax sharply marked
off from posterior part. Male has two pairs of pleopods. Telson
present. Diastylis (Fig. 80). D. goodsiri from the Arctic ocean
measures over an inch in length.
Fam. 5. Pseudocumidae.—Rather similar to Diastylidae, but
differ in reduced size of telson and presence of exopodites on third
and fourth thoracic legs of female. This family is represented by
three very similar marine forms of the genus Pseudocuma; but, as
Sars has shown,[97] the Caspian Sea contains thirteen peculiar
species, only one of which can be referred to the genus Pseudocuma,
while the rest may be partitioned among four genera, Pterocuma,
Stenocuma, Caspiocuma, Schizorhynchus.

Order III. Isopoda.

The Isopoda and the Amphipoda are frequently classed together as

Arthrostraca or Edriophthalmata, owing to a number of features
which they share in common, as, for instance, the sessile eyes which
distinguish them from the podophthalmatous Schizopoda and
Decapoda, the absence of a carapace, and the thoracic limbs which
are uniramous throughout their whole existence. For the rest, in the
presence of brood-plates and the other diagnostic characters, they
are plainly allied to the other Peracarida, and an easy transition is
effected from the Mysidacea to the Isopoda through the Chelifera or
Anisopoda. Only one thoracic segment is usually fused with the head,
the appendage of this segment being the maxillipede; in the Chelifera
among Isopoda, and the Caprellidae among Amphipoda, two
thoracic segments are fused with the head.
The Isopoda are distinguished from the Amphipoda by the dorso-
ventral flattening of the body, as opposed to the lateral flattening in
the Amphipoda, by the posterior position of the heart, and by the
branchial organs being situated on the abdominal instead of on the
thoracic limbs.
The Isopoda, following Sars’[98] classification, fall into six sub-
orders—the Chelifera, Flabellifera, Valvifera, Asellota, Oniscoida,
and Epicarida,—to which must be added the Phreatoicidea.
 Sub-Order 1. Chelifera.

The Chelifera, including the families (1) Apseudidae and (2)

Tanaidae, are interesting in that they afford a transition between
the ordinary Isopods and the Mysidacea. The important features in
which they resemble the Mysidacea are, first, the fusion of the first
two thoracic segments with the head, with the coincident formation
of a kind of carapace in which the respiratory functions are
discharged by a pair of branchial lamellae attached to the
maxillipedes; and, second, the presence of very small exopodites on
the first two thoracic appendages of the Apseudidae.
The second pair of thoracic limbs, i.e. the pair behind the
maxillipedes, are developed both in the Apseudidae and Tanaidae
into a pair of powerful chelae, and these frequently show marked
sexual differences, being much more highly developed in the males
than in the females. The biramous and flattened pleopods are purely
natatory in function, and the uropods or pleopods of the sixth pair
are terminal in position and slender.
Both families, of which the Apseudidae contain the larger forms,
sometimes attaining to an inch in length, are littoral in habit, or
occur in sand and ooze at considerable depths, many of the genera
being blind. Many Tanaids (e.g. Leptochelia, Tanais, Heterotanais,
etc.) live in the algal growths of the littoral zone, and being highly
heliotropic they are easy to collect if a basinful of algae is placed in a
strong light. The females carry the eggs about with them in a brood-
pouch formed, as is usual in the Peracarida, by lamellae produced
from the bases of the thoracic limbs. The males on coming to
maturity do not appear to grow any more, or to take food, their
mouth-parts frequently degenerating and the alimentary canal being
devoid of food. They are thus in the position of insects which do not
moult after coming to maturity; and, as in Insects, the males are apt
to show a kind of high and low dimorphism—certain of the males
being small with secondary sexual characters little different from
those of the females, while others are large with these characters
highly developed. Fritz Müller, in his Facts for Darwin, observes
that in a Brazilian species of Leptochelia, apparently identical with
the European L. dubia, the males occur under two totally distinct
forms—one in which the chelae are greatly developed, and another in
which the chelae resemble those
of the female, but the antennae in
this form are provided with far
longer and more numerous
sensory hairs than in the first
form. Müller suggested that these
two varieties were produced by
natural selection, the characters
of the one form compensating for
the absence of the characters of
the other. A general consideration
of the sexual dimorphism in the
Tanaidae[99] lends some support
to this view, since the smaller
species with feeble chelae do
appear to be compensated by a
greater development of sensory
hairs on the antennae, but the
specific differences are so difficult
to appreciate in the Tanaidae that
it is possible that the two forms of
the male in Müller’s supposed
single species really belonged to
two separate species.
 Fig. 81.—Apseudes spinosus, ♂, × 15. A,
1st antenna; Ab, 6th abdominal
appendage; T, 2nd thoracic appendage.
(After Sars.)

Sub-Order 2. Flabellifera.

The Flabellifera include a number of rather heterogeneous families

which resemble one another, however, in the uropods being lateral
and not terminal, and being expanded together with the telson to
form a caudal fan for swimming. The pleopods are sometimes
natatory and sometimes branchial in function. Some of the families
are parasitic or semi-parasitic in habit.
Fam. 1. Anthuridae.—These are elongated cylindrical creatures
found in mud and among weeds upon the sea-bottom; their mouth-
parts are evidently intended for piercing and sucking, but whether
they are parasitic at certain periods on other animals is not exactly
known. Anthura, Paranthura, Cruregens.
Fam. 2. Gnathiidae.[100]—These forms appear to be related to
the Anthuridae; they are ectoparasitic on various kinds of fish during
larval life, but on assuming the adult state they do not feed any more,
subsisting merely on the nourishment amassed during the larval
periods. The larvae themselves are continually leaving their hosts,
and can be taken in great numbers living freely among weeds on the
sea-bottom. The larvae, together with the adults of Gnathia
maxillaris, are extremely abundant among the roots of the sea-weed
Poseidonia cavolinii in the Bay of Naples. The young larvae hatch
out from the body of the female in the state shown in Fig. 82, A. This
minute larva fixes upon a fish, and after a time it is transformed into
the so-called Praniza larva (B), in which the gut is so distended with
the fluid sucked from the host that the segmentation in the hind part
of the thorax is entirely lost. When this larva moults it may, however,
reacquire temporarily its segmentation. After a certain period of this
parasitic mode of life the Praniza finally abandons its host, and
becomes transformed into the adult male or female. This may take
place at very different stages in the growth of the larva, the range of
variation in size of the adults being 1–8 mm., and it must be
 remembered that when once the
adult condition is assumed
growth entirely ceases. What it is
that determines the stage of
growth in each individual when it
shall be transformed into the
adult is not known. The males
and females differ from one
another so extraordinarily that it
was for long denied that they
were both derived from the
Praniza larvae. This is
nevertheless the case. The change
from the Praniza to the female
(Fig. 82, C) is not very great. The
ovary absorbs all the
nourishment in the gut and
comes to occupy the whole of the
body, all the other organs
degenerating, including the
alimentary canal and mouth-
Fig. 82.—Gnathia maxillaris. A, parts. Indeed, only the limbs with
Segmented larva, × 10; B, Praniza their muscles and the nervous
larva, × 5; C, gravid female, × 5; D, system remain. The change to the
male, × 5.
male (D) is more radical. The
food is here stored in the liver,
which increases in the male just as the ovary does in the female. The
segmentation is reacquired, and the massive square head is formed
from the hinder part of the head in the Praniza, the anterior portion
with its stylet-like appendages being thrown away. The powerful
nippers of the male are not formed inside the cases of the old
styliform mandibles, but are independent and possibly not
homologous organs. The meaning of the marked sexual dimorphism
and the use of the males’ nippers are not in the least known, though
the animals are easy to keep under observation. In captivity the
males never take the slightest notice of either larval or adult females.
Fam. 3. Cymothoidae.[101]—This is a group of parasites more
completely parasitic than the foregoing, but their outer organisation
does not differ greatly from an ordinary Isopodan form. A great
many very similar species are known which infest the gill-chambers,
mouths, and skin of various fishes. The chief interest that attaches to
them is found in the fact that a number of them, and perhaps all, are
hermaphrodite, each individual acting as a male when free-
swimming and young, and then subsequently settling down and
becoming female. This condition is exactly the same as that
occurring universally in the great group of parasitic Isopoda, the
Epicarida, to be considered later. There is no evidence that the
Cymothoidae are phyletically related to the Epicarida, so that the
similar sexual organisation appears to be due to convergence
resulting from similar conditions of life. The general question of
hermaphroditism in the Crustacea has been shortly discussed on pp.
105–106. Cymothoa.
Fam. 4. Cirolanidae.—In this family is placed the largest Isopod
known—the deep-sea Bathynomus giganteus, found in the Gulf of
Mexico and the Indian Ocean, sometimes measuring a foot long by
four inches broad. A common small littoral form is Cirolana.
Fam. 5. Serolidae.[102]—The genus Serolis comprises flattened
forms bearing a curious resemblance to Trilobites, which Milne
Edwards considered more than superficial. The genus is confined to
the littoral and deep waters of the southern hemisphere.
Fam. 6. Sphaeromidae.[103]—These are flattened, broad-bodied
forms, most commonly met with in the Mediterranean and warmer
seas. Without being actually parasitic, they are frequently found as
scavengers in decaying material, and they show some relationship to
the parasitic Cymothoidae. In some of the genera, e.g. Cymodoce, the
ovigerous female shows a degenerate condition of the mouth-parts,
while the maxillipedes undergo an enlargement, and are used for
causing a current through the brood-chamber.

Sub-Order 3. Valvifera.

The Valvifera, illustrated by the Idotheidae and Arcturidae, are

characterised by the uropods being turned back and expanded to
form folding doors covering up the delicate pleopods, which are
mostly respiratory in function, though the anterior pairs may serve
as swimming organs. Arcturus is a typically deep sea genus, many
species, remarkably furnished
with spiny processes, having been
taken by the Challenger in the
southern hemisphere. The
Idotheidae are more littoral
forms, several species of Idothea
being commonly met with off the
British coasts, occasionally
penetrating into brackish or even
fresh water.

Fig. 83.—Munnopsis typica

(Munnopsidae), ♂ , × 2. A, 2nd
antenna; Ab, abdomen; T, 5th thoracic
appendage or 4th leg. (After Sars.)

Sub-Order 4. Asellota.

In this group the abdominal segments are fused dorsally to form a

shield-like caudal region; the pleopods are respiratory in function
and reduced in numbers, the first pair being often expanded and
produced backwards to form an operculum covering the rest. Several
of the Asellota are fresh-water, Asellus aquaticus (Asellidae) being
extremely abundant all over Europe in weed-grown ditches, the mud
of slowly-moving streams, and even on the shores of large lakes.
They are mostly sluggish in habit, but the marine Munnopsidae
(Fig. 83, Munnopsis) are expert swimmers, the swimming organs
being fashioned by the expansion and elongation of the thoracic legs.

Sub-Order 5. Oniscoida.
 The Oniscoida[104] are terrestrial forms in which the abdomen is
fully segmented, the pleopods are respiratory, their endopodites
being delicate branchiae, while their exopodites are plate-like and
form protective opercula for the gills, and the uropods are biramous
and not expanded. The epimera of the segments are greatly
produced. The terrestrial Isopods, although air-breathers,[105] are
dependent on moisture, and are only found in damp situations. It
seems probable that they have been derived from marine Isopods,
since the more generalised of them, e.g., Ligia (Fig. 84), common on
the English coasts, are only found in damp caves and crannies in the
rocks.

Fig. 84.—Ligia oceanica, ventral and dorsal views, × 1. (From

original drawings prepared for Professor Weldon.)

The related Ligidium is found far inland, but always in the

neighbourhood of water. These two genera may be distinguished by
the numerous joints in the flagellum of the second antennae, the
flagellum being in all cases the portion of the antenna succeeding the
long fifth joint. Philoscia muscorum occurs usually near the coast,
but it is also found inland in England under trees in damp moss. This
genus and the common Oniscus, found in woods, are distinguished
by the presence of three joints in the flagellum of the second
antenna. Philoscia can be distinguished from Oniscus by its
narrower body and the pretty marbled appearance of its back. The
genus Trichoniscus has four joints in the flagellum; various species
are found in woods. In Porcellio and Armadillidium there are only
two joints in the flagellum, while Armadillidium, the common
garden wood-louse, can be distinguished from all others by the
flattened shape of the uropods, and the habit of rolling up into a ball
like an Armadillo.
There is also a very peculiar species, Platyarthrus hoffmannseggii,
which occurs in England and Northern Europe, and always lives in
ants’ nests. It is supposed that they serve as scavengers for the ants,
which tend them carefully, and evidently treat them as domestic
animals of some kind. The small creature is quite white and blind,
and has exceedingly short antennae.

Sub-Order 6. Epicarida.

The Epicarida include an immense number of Isopods, parasitic

upon other Crustacea. In the adult state they become greatly
deformed, and offer very few characters of classificatory value, but
they all pass through certain highly characteristic larval stages which
are essentially similar in the different families. All the species are
protandric hermaphrodites, each individual being male while in a
larval state, and then losing its male organisation and becoming
female as the parasitic habit is assumed.
Two series of families are recognised according to the larval stages
passed through, the Cryptoniscina, in which the adult male
organisation is assumed in the Cryptoniscus stage, and the female
condition is imposed directly upon this form, and the Bopyrina, in
which the Cryptoniscus passes into a further larval stage, the
Bopyrus, which performs the function of the male, and upon which
the female organisation is imposed as the parasitic habit is assumed.
The following is a list of the Epicarida with the Crustacea which
serve as their hosts[106]:—
 Microniscidae on Copepoda.
Cryptoniscidae on Ostracoda.
Liriopsidae on Rhizocephala.
Cryptoniscina Hemioniscidae on Cirripedia.
Cabiropsidae on Isopoda.
Podasconidae on Amphipoda.
Asconiscidae on Schizopoda.

Dajidae
Phryxidae
Bopyrina on Decapoda
Bopyridae
Entoniscidae
In all cases the first larval form
which hatches out from the
maternal brood-pouch is called
the Epicaridian larva (Fig. 85).
This little larva has two pairs of
antennae, a pair of curious frontal
processes, and a pair of
mandibles. The other mouth-
parts are missing; there are only
six thoracic limbs, but the full
complement of six biramous
pleopods are present, and at the
end of the body there may be a
long tube of unknown function.
Fig. 85.—Epicaridian larva, probably As a type of the
belonging to one of the Cryptoniscina. Cryptoniscina we may take the
A, 2nd antenna; Ab, abdominal Liriopsidae,[107] parasitic on the
appendages; T, thoracic appendages. Rhizocephala, which are, of
(From Bonnier, after Hansen.)
course, themselves parasitic on
the Decapoda, the whole
association forming a very remarkable study in Carcinology.
Almost every species of the Rhizocephala is subject to the attacks
of Liriopsids, the latter fixing either on the Rhizocephala themselves,
or else on the Decapod host at a point near the fixation of the
Rhizocephalous parasite. An exceedingly common Liriopsid is
Danalia curvata, parasitic on Sacculina neglecta, which is itself
parasitic on the spider-crab, Inachus mauritanicus, at Naples. The
adult Danalia is a mere curved bag full of eggs or developing
embryos, and without any other recognisable organs except two pairs
of spermathecae upon the ventral surface where the spermatozoa
derived from the larval males are stored.
In Fig. 86 is represented a
female of Inachus mauritanicus
which carried upon it two
Sacculinae and a Danalia
curvata, and upon the latter are
seen two minute larval males in
the act of fertilising the adult
Danalia. The eggs develop into
the Epicaridian stage, after which
the larva passes into the
Cryptoniscus stage (Fig. 87). In Fig. 86.—Inachus mauritanicus, ♀, × 1,
this larval form the segments are carrying two Sacculina neglecta (a, b),
clearly delimited; the only mouth- and a Danalia curvata (c), the latter
bearing two dwarf males.
parts present are the mandibles,
but there are seven pairs of
thoracic limbs and the full number of pleopods. This Cryptoniscus
stage is found in all the Epicarida, and only differs in detail in the
various families.
In the Cryptoniscina the Cryptoniscus larva is the male, and at this
stage possesses a pair of large testes in the thorax. The ovaries are
also present at this stage as very small bodies applied to the anterior
ends of the testes. The larval males in this state seek out adult fixed
Danaliae and fertilise them; and, when this is accomplished, they
themselves become fixed to the host and begin to develop into the
adult female condition. The limbs are all lost, and out of the mouth
grows a long proboscis (Fig. 88, P), which penetrates the tissues of
the host. The ovaries begin to grow, and a remarkable process of
absorption in the testes takes place. These organs, when fixation
occurs, are never empty of spermatozoa, and are frequently crammed
with them. After fixation some large cells at the interior borders of
the testes begin to feed upon the remains of these organs and to grow
enormously in size and to multiply by amitosis. These phagocytes, as
they really are, attain an enormous size, but they are doomed to
 degeneration, the chromatin
becoming dispersed through the
cytoplasm, and the nuclei
dividing first by amitosis and
then breaking up and
disappearing. As the parasite
grows, the heart at the posterior
end of the body ceases to beat;
the ovaries increase enormously
at the expense of the alimentary
canal, and on the ventral surface
two pairs of spermathecae are
invaginated ready to receive the
spermatozoa of a larval male. In
the adult condition, after
fertilisation has taken place and
the ovaries occupy almost the
whole of the body, the remains of
the phagocytic cells can be seen
on the dorsal surface in a
degenerate state. They evidently
are not used as food, and their
sole function is to make away
with the male organisation when
it has become useless.[108]
In the series Bopyrina, after
Fig. 87.—Ventral view of Cryptoniscus the free-living Epicaridian and
larva of Danalia curvata, ♂, × 25. Cryptoniscus stages, a further
larval state is assumed, called the
Bopyrus, which is the functional
male, and, after performing this function, passes on to the adult
female condition.
The family Bopyridae is parasitic in the branchial chamber of
Decapoda, especially Macrura and Anomura. When one of these
Decapods is infested with an adult Bopyrid the gill-chamber in which
it is situated is greatly swollen, as shown in Fig. 90. A very common
Bopyrid is Bopyrus fougerouxi, parasitic in the gill-chambers of
Palaemon serratus. The Bopyrus larva or functional male has the
 appearance shown in Fig. 91. It
differs from the Cryptoniscus
stage in possessing a rudimentary
pair of anterior thoracic limbs
and seven pairs normally
developed, while the abdominal
limbs are plate-like and branchial
in function. The male can often be
found attached to the female
beneath the last pair of
incubatory lamellae.
Fig. 88.—Side view of Danalia curvata, The adult female condition,
× 15, shortly after fixation and loss of which is assumed after the
larval appendages. A, Alimentary canal; Bopyrid stage is passed through,
E, eye; H, heart; N, phagocytic cells; O,
ovary; P, proboscis.
is illustrated in Fig. 92. The body
acquires a remarkable
asymmetry, due to the unequal
pressure exerted by the walls of
the gill-chamber. The antennae
and mandibles (Fig. 92, B) are
entirely covered up by the largely
expanded maxillipedes; maxillae
are, as usual, entirely absent.
Very large lamellae grow out from
the bases of the thoracic limbs to
form a brood-pouch, and in this
manner the adult condition is
attained.
The final complication in the
life-histories of these Isopoda is
reached by the family
Entoniscidae, which are
parasitic when adult inside the Fig. 89.—Optical section (dorsal view)
thoracic cavity of Brachyura and of Danalia curvata, in the same stage
Paguridae. The cephalothorax of as Fig. 88. A, Alimentary canal; Ec,
ectoderm; H, heart; N, phagocytic cells;
a Carcinus maenas, which O, ovaries; P, proboscis.
contains an adult Portunion
maenadis (P), is shown in Fig. 93.
 The parasite is of a reddish colour
when alive.

Fig. 90.—Galathea intermedia, with a

Pleurocrypta microbranchiata under
its left branchiostegite (B), × 1. (After
Sars.)
Fig. 91.—Ventral view of male Bopyrus
fougerouxi, × 30. A, 1st and 2nd
antennae; T, 8th (last) thoracic
appendage. (After Bonnier.)
 Fig. 92.—Bopyrus fougerouxi. A, Ventral
view of female carrying a male (M)
between her abdominal appendages, × 8;
B, ventral view of part of head of female,
the maxillipedes and the left mandible
having been removed. A.1, A.2, 1st and
2nd antennae; M, male; Mn, right
mandible; Mx, left maxillipede; O,
oostegite; T, left 4th thoracic appendage
or 3rd leg. (After Bonnier.)

The Entoniscidae pass through a free living Epicaridian and

Cryptoniscus stage, and become adult males in the Bopyrus stage. It
is stated, however, by Giard and Bonnier[109] that these individuals,
which actually function as males, never grow up into adult females,
though all the adult females have
passed through a male stage in
which the male genital ducts are
not formed. The
hermaphroditism, therefore, in
these animals at any rate is
absolutely useless from a
reproductive point of view, and
this justifies our looking for some
other explanation of it, such as
was suggested on p. 105.

Fig. 93.—Cephalothorax of Carcinus

maenas, seen from the ventral side,
containing a parasitic Portunion
maenadis (P), × ½. (After Bonnier.)

Fig. 94.—Portunion maenadis, ♀:—A, Young, × 10; B, older, × 5;

C, adult, before the eggs are laid, × 3. A, 2nd antenna; Ab,
abdomen; B, anterior lobe of brood-pouch; B′, its lateral lobe; H,
head; 1, 2, 1st and 2nd incubatory lamellae (oostegites). (After
Giard and Bonnier.)
 The Bopyrus fixes in the gill-chamber of the host and becomes
converted into the adult female by a series of transformations. As
these changes take place it invaginates the wall of the gill-chamber
and pushes its way into the thoracic cavity of the crab, though it lies
all the time enveloped in the invaginated wall of the gill-chamber,
and not free in the body-cavity of the crab. The transformations
which it undergoes are shown in Fig. 94. The body first assumes a
grub-like appearance (A), and two pairs of incubatory lamellae (1, 2)
grow out from the first and second thoracic segments. In the next
stage (B) these lamellae assume gigantic proportions, and four pairs
of branchiae grow out from the abdominal segments (Ab). In the
final stage (C) the incubatory lamellae have further increased in size,
and constitute the main bulk of the body; the enormous mass of eggs
is passed into the incubatory pouch, and all that remains of the rest
of the body is the small head (H) and the abdomen (Ab), furnished
with its branchiae. Communication with the external world is kept
up through an aperture which leads from the brood-pouch into the
gill-chamber of the host, and through this aperture the young are
hatched out when they are developed sufficiently.
The presence of these parasites, although they are never in actual
contact with the internal organs of the crab, calls forth the same
phenomenon of parasitic castration as was observed in the
Rhizocephala. A remarkable association is also found to exist
between the Entoniscidae and Rhizocephala, of such a kind that, on
the whole, a crab infested with a Rhizocephalan is more likely to
harbour an Entoniscid than one without. The explanation of this
association is probably that a crab with a Sacculina inside it is
prevented from moulting as often as an uninfected crab, and, in
consequence, the larval stages of the Entoniscid in the crab’s gill-
chamber are more safely passed through.

Sub-Order 7. Phreatoicidea.[110]

The members of this sub-order, although agreeing with the

Isopoda in the essentials of their anatomy, resemble the Amphipoda
in being rather laterally compressed, and in having the hand of the
first free thoracic limb enlarged and subchelate. The abdomen is
greatly produced laterally by expansions of the segments. In fact, the
shape of the body and of the limbs is very Amphipodan.—
Phreatoicus from New Zealand, Southern Australia, and Tasmania.
Phreatoicopsis,[111] a very large form from Gippsland, Victoria. Only
one family exists, Phreatoicidae.

Order IV. Amphipoda.

In this order the body is flattened laterally, the heart is anterior in

position, and the branchial organs are attached to the thoracic limbs.
There are three well defined sub-orders, (i.) the Crevettina,
including a vast assemblage of very similar animals, of which the
common Gammarus and Orchestia may serve as examples; (ii.) the
Laemodipoda or Caprellids, and (iii.) the Hyperina.
We cannot do more than touch on the organisation of these sub-
orders.

Sub-Order 1. Crevettina.

In this sub-order only one thoracic segment is fused with the head;
the basal joints of the thoracic limbs are expanded to form broad
lateral plates, and the abdomen is well developed, with six pairs of
pleopods, the last three pairs being always turned backwards, and
stiffened to act as uropods.
This group has numerous fresh-water representatives, e.g.
Gammarus of several species, the blind well-shrimp Niphargus, and
the S. American Hyalella; but the vast majority of the species are
marine, and are found especially in the littoral zone wherever the
rocks are covered with a rich growth of algae, Polyzoa, etc. The
Talitridae or “Sand-hoppers” have deserted the waters and live
entirely in the sand and under rocks on the shore, and one common
European species, Orchestia gammarellus, penetrates far inland,
and may be found in gardens where the soil is moist many miles
from the sea.
The Rev. T. R. R. Stebbing, in his standard work[112] on this group,
recognises forty-one families, and more than 1000 species, so that