| Despite an increase in critical attention to the relationships between literature and cinema, and towards screenwriting as a genre unto itself, the long-lasting activity of Italian novelists and poets as screenwriters has been consistently dismissed as a marginal aspect of the twentieth century encounter between the written word and the cinematic image. My dissertation examined the significant yet overlooked body of screenplays written by Italian authors, with particular attention to the paradigmatic decade of the sixties.Certain fundamental theoretical understandings about the nature of film seem to have led to the neglect of a literary study of screenplays. Firstly, screenplays are not intended to be read as literary texts but rather to be used as the written foundations for films. A screenplay, therefore, is a provisional text whose verbal configuration is destined to be transformed, and in a certain sense, to disappear, into a cinematic language. Secondly, screenplays are often creations of more than one author, so it is impossible to evaluate them through traditional concepts of literary authorship. Finally, screenplays are utilitarian texts often considered by the screenwriters themselves more as a source of remuneration rather than creative work.While they discourage a simple literary evaluation of screenplays, these views do allow for an interdisciplinary critical approach. From an interdisciplinary perspective screenplays not only stand at the important crossroads of literature and cinema, but also at the crossroads of the codification and diffusion of national literary values. In my research I focused on ostensibly literary screenplays---screenplays which consciously draw from Italian literary culture and traditions. Consequently, I have favored an in-depth study of screenplays written by novelists and poets. |
