Script Thinking and Cinematic Language of Sergei Dovlatov’s Short Story “Driver’s Gloves”

This article examines the cinematic textuality of Sergei Dovlatov's short story “Driver's Gloves” within the framework of intermedial interaction between literature and cinema. The study's relevance is predicated on the sustained interest in contemporary literary studies regarding forms of cinematic thinking in prose and the transposition of cinematic language into verbal texts. The analysis focuses on screenwriting principles of narrative organization and their function in generating comic and semantic effects. The primary material includes the short story from the cycle “The Suitcase”, its accompanying memoiristic and journalistic context, as well as publications reflecting the author's perception of cinema. The methodology integrates intermedial and narratological approaches with elements of structural-functional analysis. The study demonstrates that the narrative is constructed according to the logic of a literary screenplay, employing montage composition, synoptic delivery, directorial stage directions, and visual granularity. It is established that Dovlatov supplants the static, statue-like figures from Shlippenbach's film project with characters from mass scenes, thereby transforming the synopsis into a fictionalized account of the filming process as perceived by a participant. The analysis foregrounds the connection between Dovlatov's poetics and the aesthetics of Michelangelo Antonioni, manifested in the dramaturgy of the pause, the deceleration of action, and the fixation of everyday emptiness. The findings substantiate that the story's screenplay-like structure amplifies its pseudodocumentary effect, generates a specific mode of cinematic comedy, and constitutes the story's distinct cinematic language.