Gosho and the Gagman: Scriptwriting at the Time of the Talkie Crisis

The advent of sound cinema in early 1930s Japan brought changes and challenges to most parts of film production and with it a considerable crisis. This chapter examines a number of scripts written by Fushimi Akira and directed by Gosho Heinosuke immediately before and after the coming of sound. While early sound cinema has hitherto invited considerable scholarship, it is somewhat surprising that scriptwriting, one of the aspects of film production most affected by the adoption of sound, has remained understudied. The main aim is to observe a certain textual form in transition and keep attention on what implications this might have for a more general understanding on which changes took place in the medium of cinema at the time of the "talkie crisis." The film script, unlike its screen counterpart, remains a work in progress of which commonly many different versions exist, often depending upon the stage of (pre)production it represents.