“I was astounded at how really useful ‘thematic thinking’ turned out to be.”
Stephen King
On Writing, page 207
A Quiet Place
While I have found many quotes from talented writers and directors talking about their disdain for the topic of theme, I will say I have found more from equality talked writers and directors who embrace theme in their work, and in the work of others.
When Oscar-winning Francis Marion wrote the following words in her 1937 book keep in mind that talking pictures were not even a decade old. And feature films had only been made for about two decades.
“Throughout most of the Depression, Americans went assiduously, devotedly, almost compulsively, to the movies.”
Carlos Stevens
I don’t know how many other filmmakers in the 1930s agreed with her, but there were some fine films made during that time. In fact, many consider 1939 as the single best year in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Some would say the best year for films ever.
Gone with the Wind
The Wizard of Oz
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
Wuthering Heights
Stage Coach
Of Mice and Men
Ninotchka
Dark Victory
Goodbye Mr. Chips
Gunga Din
Young Mr. Lincoln
Beau Geste
Union Pacific
Golden Boy
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
This was at the tale end of The Great Depression when millions of Americans went to movies weekly. World War II and television were a few years away from changing movie going habits forever.
Marion embraced theme and spent seven pages covering the topic from her point of view. Here’s another excerpt from her book:
Examine any good plot and you will find a theme imbedded in it; it is the theme that gives the plot objective and purpose. A plot that does not prove anything is diffused and uninteresting. It ‘doesn’t get anywhere.’ As a matter of fact, a plot is merely the more or less mechanical invention that gives opportunity to the characters to portray a theme; and the theme keeps the story from being just a series of episodes concerning the same characters.
The theme rarely is mentioned in the story; it is never rubbed in. The audience may not put it in words at all, but will recognize the theme and the fact that the story keeps in line with it. Suppose that you have taken for your theme the slogan, ‘It pays to advertise.’ These words may never be mentioned in the story, but the story itself will demonstrate the truth of that statement.
. . . The theme which Sinclair Lewis definitely proved, and which certainly gave purpose to his Main Street, might be stated simply as, ‘the ugliness of life in middlewestern town.’ The theme of Sorrel and Son by Warwick Deeping might be, ‘No sacrifice is to great for a father to make for a beloved son’; of The Four Horseman of by Ibanez, as ‘Want, disease, famine, and death forever follow war’; and that The Miracle Man*, ‘Spiritual regeneration is possible even in the worst of men.’”
Screenwriter Frances Marion
How to Write and Sell Film Stories (1937)
pages 106-107*Since Marion does not give the author for The Miracle Man I am not sure if she is referencing the movie versions—there were two; The Miracle Man (1919) starring Lon Chaney, The Miracle Man (1932)—or the 1914 Broadway play version , or the original source material—The Miracle Man novel by Canadian Frank L. Packard.
P.S. You could paraphrase Marion’s quote about Sorrel and Son to be “No sacrifice is to great for a father to make for his beloved family” and I think that theme that transcending A Quiet Place (2018) beyond just a monster movie. And a big reason for its box office success. And the father’s sacrifice in that movie, according to screenwriters Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, was an idea that they hit on early.
