Screenplay as Visual Literature

Researchers, journalists, and critics of the Classical Hollywood cinema period worked a lot on the hunt against communists in Hollywood and on the literary value of a screenplay. However, some fundamental questions remain still partially open: firstly, besides the guaranteed lavish studio salaries, what led the best writers in the American literary scene to enter and remain in the field of cinema, which they had harshly criticized? Secondly, what drove the US government to see in Hollywood screenwriters (indeed, it should be remembered that in the List of the “Hollywood Ten", nine of them were screenwriters) a ramification of the Communist Party dangerous to the American society? Thirdly, given the unprecedented presence of talented writers in the film industry during Classical Hollywood cinema, can we affirm that the discipline of screenwriting improved its status in visual literature? This article will try to answer the above-mentioned questions – which as we will see are deeply intertwined – and aims to reopen the issue of whether screenwriting can be accounted for visual literature, as most cinema employers and many academics judge it as a technical blueprint.