Scene Description Spotlight: “The African Queen”
Today a blast from the past: An excerpt from the shooting script for the movie The African Queen (1951), adapted from the C.S. Forrester…
Today a blast from the past: An excerpt from the shooting script for the movie The African Queen (1951), adapted from the C.S. Forrester novel by James Agee and John Huston (Peter Viertel’s name is on the script, but he received no formal credit). This script was written six decades ago and is a stark reminder of how different current screenwriting style is than that of yesteryear, particularly re scene description.
Here is how the script introduces the two lead characters, Rose (Katherine Hepburn) and Allnut (Humphrey Bogart)
Rather than dissecting the scenes myself, let’s open it up for discussion. Critiquing these pages, what elements of scene description do you see as being similar and dissimilar to contemporary style guidelines?
I’m posting this to end our series on scene description to make a point: style and format changes. It is not sacrosanct. It evolves. Your goal, as a writer, is simply this: Do what you need to do to tell the most entertaining yet clear iteration of your story.
A trailer for the movie:
For more Scene Description Spotlight articles, go here.