Filmgoers are at last beginning to realize that producers and directors are entirely different screen species. In the past, the director has received all the publicity. The producer has been a vague man-behind-the-scenes.
Apart from the late Irving Thalberg, Sam Goldwyn, and perhaps one or two others, producers used to be completely unknown by name, and most filmgoers have given the director all the credit for the success of a picture.
A lot of people have criticized my recent declaration that the director was becoming less important and that the producer was really the man on whom pictures relied.
I stick to my guns. And, let me remind you, I am still a director myself.
In the old days, it is true, the director was the man who mattered. The producer was concerned merely with the financial side of picture-making, and probably didn’t know the difference between a long shot and a close-up. But this type of producer is fast going out.
You have heard, of course, numerous fantastic-sounding stories of mismanagement in film production, many of them true. All the trouble could be traced to this splitting up of authority. But it is being realized today that there must be one man at the helm.
That man should be the producer. He should see the picture through from beginning to end. He must know all sides of the business and be a complete technician.
One very prominent producer frankly says to his directors, when asking them to make a picture for them: “Do you think you could sink your individuality to suit me?” And every picture that bears his name is individualistic.
The ultimate ideal is the writer-producer (and this is already happening in America), a man who creates the story with the right material around him—in his case, the studio personnel, just as the painter has his brushes and canvas. And he can follow his story through right to the cutting-room.
Many a good script results in a mediocre picture. Something goes wrong before the film reaches the screen. With the author-producer watching every point, this sort of thing is far less likely to happen.
Pending this idea, the producer must be the man in control. There is no doubt that the story has become the most important thing in film production. And control of the story must be in the hands of a person who can most objectively see the finished effort.
The producer must be the man with this flair. Consider, for instance, David Selznick. He works closely on the story end of his pictures and follows them right through.
I consider Victor Saville a good example of the modern producer. His films all bear his imprint and are full of his ideas. Alexander Korda and Michael Balcon are other examples, and Samuel Goldwyn is an old-time producer who has kept pace with the times.
Many filmgoers can now discern the touch of Pandro S. Berman. He has produced all the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers pictures. Different directors have actually handled the films, but there has been that Pandro S. Berman shine on all of them.
Then, there are those elaborate M-G-M musicals, such as Maytime, The Great Ziegfeld and Rose Marie. All have been produced by the same man, Hunt Stromberg.
The producer may be a man with vision but without the actual ability to handle the technical task of putting a picture together. He needs a director to carry out his ideas, just as he needs the property men to build the scenery and the electricians to look after the lights.
But, in some cases, there are men who are equipped to be directors as well as producers. Thus we have such men as Ernst Lubitsch and Frank Capra. They have the right knowledge and capacity.
I shudder to think of the pictures that have gone wrong through the old-time all-powerful director, without the right flair, who was allowed to do as he liked on the floor, and chopped and changed stories about until they were completely ruined.
I shudder to think, too, of pictures that have never fulfilled their promise because of the old-time producer who cared for nothing but finance, and short-sightedly restricted production expenses quite unnecessarily, spoiling the ship for a ha’porth of tar.
What of the director? I seem to have been pretty hard on him. I want to make it clear that there are exceptions to every rule. There are a good many directors who are as important as the producer. In fact, they are almost producers themselves.
I am thinking more of the future than anything else. These brilliant directors of today are the producers of tomorrow; and the directors of tomorrow will be their stooges.
This is going to mean more opportunities for younger and ambitious people in the film business. At the moment, the would-be director has a big uphill fight which is almost sufficient to kill his initiative. Studios refuse to entrust an important picture to a new man.
So the newcomer has to start with cheap productions, the weakest of stories, the poorest of stars. It is a miracle if he can do anything with his material. It is like asking an architect to build a good house with inexperienced workmen, an insufficient number of bricks, and rubbish with which to make the finishing touches.
But the producer who is personally interested in every stage of a picture can afford to experiment with his interpreters, and younger people are going to get chances they never had.
Just because the director is no longer top dog doesn’t mean that he is at all unimportant. Of course he is important. But in a different way from yesterday.
The film industry is always changing. And this is one of its very necessary and very interesting changes.
“Directors Are Dead” was originally published in Film Weekly, November 20, 1937, 14.