Faulkner's screenplay

I read the screenplay before I the short story, and felt that it would have been better to do it the other way around, as there were things in the screenplay that I didn’t immediately pick up on until they were clarified in the short story- namely, the ‘beaver’ game played by Claude and Ronnie throughout both texts, and the nature of Ronnie and Claude’s job in the navy. After reading the short story, I realized that this was largely due to the different forms and purposes of the texts; in order to get a fully formed understanding of the plot when reading a screenplay, you must take into account other elements than just the dialogue. You must be able to incorporate the stage directions into your understanding of the plot and character development, and constantly imagine yourself seeing it on screen at the same time as reading the words on the page. In a sense, a screenplay is only a tiny part of the final artwork, while the story is created as a whole, with no possibility for additions to be made, or further meaning applied through visual codes and film techniques. Themes and motifs are more wholly articulated, resulting in the whole thing appearing far more holistic and complete. There is a satisfaction in reading a novel or a short story that is not present when reading a screenplay, which is disjointed, awkward and somehow hollow.

                                   Gary Cooper and Joan Crawford in Today We Live (1933)

One of the most interesting aspects of reading these texts was the significant changes that occurred in the transition from story to screenplay. The inclusion of the female character Anne, in order to facilitate a romantic subplot (which in the end actually ends up being the focus of the entire plot) is a clear example of the requirements of mainstream Hollywood. It also draws attention to the purpose for which each text has been created; a short story is designed and almost expected to challenge, shock and engage the reader, whereas from a Hollywood film, one expects escapism, mindless entertainment and an overall confirmation of humanity’s essential goodness (through the inclusion of love, forgiveness and Ronnie and Claude’s sacrifice of themselves so that Bogard may live to marry Anne). In an article about Faulkner’s time in Hollywood I read that he was told by Hawks, the director of the film, “the first thing I want is a story, the second thing I want is a character”. I think this difference in value between the literary and cinematic worlds is absolutely clear as one sees Ronnie’s gruff, enigmatic character is diluted to an almost featureless background figure, and Claude’s heartbreakingly endearing kindness is transformed into an almost grotesquely British caricature, in order for a mainstream American audience to understand them on film. The cultural divide is also a significant issue at play in the transformation, as the natural dialogue of the story is replaced with overly minimalist  speech, to convey a ‘clipped’ British accent. It is very easy to be disillusioned by the value judgments of Hollywood that undeniably come across in examining this transformation. I feel that Faulkner himself aptly described this sentiment, in his Nobel Prize winning speech from 1949:

“A few years ago I was taken on as a script writer at a a Hollywood studio, At once I bean to hear the man in charge talking of ‘angles,’ ‘story angles’, and then I realized that they were not even interested in truth, the old universal truths of love and honour and pride and pity and compassion and sacrifice.”

Sources:

Bruce Kawin, Faulkner and Film, (New York: F C Ungar, 1977)

Faulkner's MGM screenplays edited with an introduction and commentaries by Bruce F. Kawin, (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1982)