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 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 one of the two lead characters, Rose (Katherine Hepburn):
EXT. A NATIVE VILLAGE IN A CLEARING BETWEEN THE JUNGLE AND
THE RIVER. LATE MORNING
LONG SHOT — A CHAPEL
Intense light and heat, a stifling silence. Then the SOUND
of a reedy organ, of two voices which make the words distinct,
and of miscellaneous shy, muffled, dragging voices, beginning
a hymn:
VOICES
(singing)
“Guide me O Thou Great Jehovah…”
INT. CHAPEL — LONG SHOT — THE LENGTH OF THE BLEAK CHAPEL
PAST THE CONGREGATION, ON BROTHER, AT THE LECTERN, AND ROSE,
AT THE ORGAN
BROTHER, a missionary, faces CAMERA near center; ROSE, his
sister, is at side, her face averted. Everybody is singing.
“Pilgrim through this barren land…”
MEDIUM SHOT — BROTHER:
middle-aged, rock-featured, bald, sweating painfully, very
much in earnest. He is very watchful of his flock. He sings
as loud as he can, rather nasally, and tries to drive the
meaning of each word home as if it were a nail. He is beating
with his hand, and trying hard to whip up the dragging tempo:
“I am weak, but Thou art mighty…”
CLOSER SHOT — ROSE
early thirties, tight-featured and tight-haired, very hot
but sweating less than Brother.
She is pumping the pedals vigorously, spreading with her
knees the wings of wood which control the loudness, utilizing
various stops for expressiveness of special phrases, and
rather desperately studying the open hymnal, just managing
to play the right notes — a very busy woman. She, too, is
singing her best and loudest, an innocent, arid, reedy
soprano; and she, too, is very attentive to the meanings of
words:
“Hold me with Thy powerful hand.”
INSERT — HALF-WAY THROUGH THE FOREGOING LINE, AN EXOTIC AND
HORRIBLE CENTIPEDE-LIKE CREATURE SLITHERS INTO VIEW BETWEEN
TWO OF THE ORGAN KEYS. WITHOUT INTERRUPTING HER PLAYING, AS
METHODICALLY AS SHE WOULD PULL OUT A NEW STOP, ROSE SWIPES
IT AWAY.
ROSE — AS BEFORE —
completes “Thy Powerful Hand”; o.s. Voices of singers.
Unperturbed, Rose finishes her casual disposal of the bug
and pulls out a new stop.
And here is how the script introduces the other main character Allnut (Humphrey Bogart):
We close on the old dame with the bone singing —
“…my journey through.” o.s., on “…fiery, cloudy pillar”,
a queer SOUND, steadily louder: the absurdly flatulent,
yammering syncopation of a rachitic steam motor. Eyes begin
to wander from hymnals: CUT IN Brother frowning and singing
harder trying to impose order; attention to the hymn begins
to fall apart a little; FOLLOW the white, veering eyes to
FRAME, through the open window.
LONG SHOT — THE AFRICAN QUEEN
whose WHISTLE lets out a steamy whinny, then REPEATS it,
with great self-satisfaction. She is squat, flat-bottomed —
thirty feet long. A tattered awning roofs in six feet of her
stern. Amidships stand her boiler and engine. A stumpy funnel
reaches up a little higher than the awning.
ON SECOND WHINNY,
CUT TO:
MEDIUM CLOSE SHOT — ALLNUTT — ON HIS BOAT
He is in worn, rather befouled white clothes. He is barefooted
and his feet are cocked up and he is sitting on his shoulder
blades, smoking a bad cigar. He wears a ratty boater,
slantwise, against the sunlight. He is attended by two young
Negroes so tall, thin and gracile they suggest black macaroni.
One is proudly and busily puttering at the engine, which
requires a lot of attention: the other is fanning ALLNUTT,
who is feeling just fine. Allnutt speaks to the fanner in
Swahili. The young man without breaking the rhythm of his
fanning, licks out one long, boneless arm and alters the
lashed tiller; the Queen begins to swerve toward shore. o.s.,
the hymn continues, all but drowned by motor noise.
LONG SHOT — INT. CHAPEL
Rose pulls out all the stops, spreads her knees, and pumps
like mad in her effort to drown out the ENGINE SOUND. Brother
sweats and sings even harder, scowling, shaking his head.
The singing is fraying out half to hell; the congregation is
a solid black wall of wandering eyes; a few pious converts
frown or nudge at the less pious; a little group is coalescing
toward the window.
The hymn, meanwhile, continues:
“Feed me with the heavenly manna in this barren wilderness,
Be my sword, my shield, my banner, be the Lord my
righteousness.”
Rose’s sense of artistic propriety is too much for her. To
keep things going, she ought to play loud, but on the next
line —
“When I tread the verge of Jordan…” she shuts down to the
vox humana and the tremolo and maintains that through —
“Bid my anxious fears subside.”
On this line, Allnutt appears and lounges against the front
door frame still drawing on his cigar. Rose lets everything
rip fortissimo on the closing lines:
“Death of death, and hell’s destruction land me safe on
Canaan’s side.”
By the time of “hell’s destruction,” Allnutt becomes aware
that a lighted cigar in church is bad manners, and, nodding
casual apology to Brother, tosses it away onto the packed
dirt, out of our sight.
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.
[Originally posted June 3, 2010]
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