I just watched a movie from 1967 this weekend, and many of the production credits were at the beginning of the film. Nowadays, of course, they are all at the end. When did this switch happen? What was the first movie to place all of the credits (except actors, director, and producers) at the end?
Well, it’s probably not definitive, but to at least help bracket things…
Star Wars (released 1977) has no credits at the beginning. Nothing but the 20th century fox logo, “A long time ago…”, and the title, followed immediately by the introductory crawl. I remember hearing (probably from the DVD commentary / behind-the-scenes) that Lucas got in trouble with the directors’ guild about that.
1.) In most movies I’ve seen, they place credits at the front of the film, even now.
2.) They used to place a lot of credits at the end of movies even back in the silent days. I’ve seen a lot of films with at least cast credits at the end (example – 1931 Frankenstein has the cast list at the end, with “A Good Cast is Worth Repeating”, and withy credit to Boris Karloff, whose name didn’t appear in the opening credits). Orson Welles put the technical as well as the cast credits at the end of The Magnificent Ambersons (and they were spoken, rather than written. The only other movie I know of that did that was Farenheit 451)
3.) 1968’s 2001; A Space Odyssey has everything but the title at the end of the film.
3.) There were rules that required some credits at the start of the film, at least until recently. I believe that George Lucas got into trouble for putting his credits at the end, and had to pay a fine.
I was actually thinking about Star Wars as a bracket point, since its one of the earliest films I remember seeing in theaters, but its been 20 years now and I was afraid I’d forgotten something.
IIRC, Lucas got crap from the director’s guild because they said that if the producer(s) got a credit at the beginning of the film then the director also had to get a credit. Although there are not any normal credits at the start of ESB, the directors guild decided that the Lucasfilm logo was a producer credit for George Lucas and therefore penalized him for not giving a credit to Kershner (the director).
This pissed off Lucas, so he quit the guild and decided to make ROTJ director’s guild free. Which is why Steven Spielberg didn’t direct it.
I imagine a large part of that was as the various unions and organizations got their workers recognized in the credits the credits got too long to be at the begining of a movie.
When you watch old movies the credits are literally maybe 100 names and are people who worked directly on the film in large positions. Actors, cameramen, grips etc…
Now credits list everyone even remotely related to the film.