IN SUNSET BOULEVARD (1950), Billy Wilder's poisoned love letter to the silent cinema, Erich von Stroheim gives William Holden a little lesson in film history. "There were three young directors who showed promise in those days," lie says. "D. W. Griffith, Cecil B. DeMille, and Max von Mayerling." This judgment is not proto-auteurism, nor a self-serving application of the great-man theory of film history . Instead, it reflects the realization, common in the days of silent pictures, that directors were generally the people who made things happen, at least as far as the art of cinema was concerned.1
Today, industry analysts tell us that such power is spread among a small group of stars, directors, agents, and creative production heads.2 While a number of silent stars certainly developed the same authority, they were essentially seeking to control their own vehicles. Agents had no such power, and most producers were little more than glorified production managers. A few studio production chiefs did manage to put their imprint on a season's output, and an even smaller number of key screenwriters or "literary editors" could wield similar power. With producers exercising little authority, studio chiefs preoccupied with business and contractual matters, and the value of a screenplay not yet established at the level talkies would allow, much creative power was concentrated in the hands of a relatively small group of filmmakers capable of conceiving, orchestrating, and executing specific projects.
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