The essay deals with the gradual cessation of discussions of thetheory of the “iron” (rigid) screenplay (championed by Vladimir Sutyrin andMikhail Bleiman) and the theory of the “emotional” screenplay (developedby Sergei Eisenstein and Aleksandr Rzheshevsky) As these two theories werediscussed by very different personalities, their institutional or group identificationis complicated. In the second half of the 1930s, Boris Shumyatsky and BellaKravchenko developed the concept of the ideological screenplay. The main apologistof the ideological screenplay theory was Valentin Turkin. He expounded it in thebook “The Dramaturgy of Cinema” in 1938. The same historical period saw thedevelopment of the practice of publishing scripts in and periodicals and as books,as well as the phenomenon of recording screenplays from films.Turkin stood on a radical literature-centric position: "The film can be better orworse than the screenplay, but there is a screenplay next to it with which it canbe compared. <...> With this screenplay, you can make a picture again and again.Finally, it can be printed, brought to the attention of the viewer, give the viewerthe opportunity to compare the film with the screenplay, and read the screenplaywithout watching a movie <...>. The screenplay can and must be always a ‘verifyingartistic document’". If the screenplay expressed the ideology of the film, then it wasnot only an independent but also a more important work than the film itself.The screenplay’s specificity developed in three stages: 1) the prevalence of the“iron” screenplay in the 1920s; 2) the fashion for the emotional screenplay and thebeginning of the publication of screenplays in periodicals and in book form; 3) theformation of the concept of the ideological screenplay. In the Soviet culture of the1930s, literature was considered as the primary source of ideas. Other arts playedthe role of copies, dramatizations, interpretations, etc. Moreover, in a number ofstatements, although it appears to be the goal of screenwriting, the film already existsas something that a screenwriter can write down with a certain degree of precisionand excitement. The research of the genesis of the ideological screenplay conductedfor this essay has been based on rare periodicals and the archive of the All-RussianSociety of Playwrights and Composers (Vseroscomdram). Numerous examplescited in the essay demonstrate the features of literature-centric thinking. And suchmaterials as articles published in periodicals and lively discussions provide well-known patterns with vivid details