An Uncertain Dominance. An Uncertain Dominance.The Position of Writers in Czech Cinema of the Second Half of the 1940s
Abstract
The article focuses on the term "literarization" which is rarely examined in film history. Through an analysis and comparison of two independent explications of the term (as conceived in both literary history and film history), it attempts to trace the functional meaning of the term for Czech film dramaturgy after the establishment of the state monopoly in cinema. "Literarization" is understood, above all, as the ideological dominance of the literary aspect in the context of cinema, i e. a non-literary field which stems from the increased state control, as well as the historically established high prestige of the art of literature.
The article consequently shifts focus from a more general level to the individual ideological-political manifestations of the "literarization" tendency. This is demonstrated by the presence of writers in the high-level nomenclature as well as in the organs of dramaturgical supervision of cinema.
The study uses media coverage and archive documents in order to describe the reception of the term by authorities and institutions related to writers. The interdisciplinary theme "the writer in the field of cinema" provides specific testimony on state cultural policy in terms of its ambiguous, continuous as well as discontinuous aspects.