Slide published many books on the subject of early women filmmakers, including his 1977 book Early Women Directors, which he revised as The Silent Feminists in 1996. This historiography includes the work of scholars and archivists who have spent the last few decades trying to fill gaps in the collective consciousness of film history. In her book, Pink-Slipped: What Happened to Women in the Silent Film Industries, Columbia University professor Jane Gaines examines the birth of feminist film studies from this moment on, its triumphs, its failings, and the ever-changing nature of historiography. In 1972, while researching the movies of 1911 to 1920 at the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library for the American Film Institute, researchers Sharon Smith and Anthony Slide discovered among the trade papers and fan magazines from the era evidence that, contrary to what had been recorded in film history up to that point, many women were actually employed on the production side-especially as directors-during this decade. How did this research make its way into a big-budget studio film in the year 2022, and more importantly, why did it take so long for the foundational work of women in early Hollywood to be considered an integral part of film history? To answer this, we have to look back at 50 years of research and scholarship into the contributions of women during the nascence of cinema, as well as a concerted effort towards the preservation, restoration, and presentation of their films. As film historian Hilary Hallett, author of Go West, Young Women!: The Rise of Early Hollywood, pointed out in her piece on the film for Slate, “many of the freshest insights from historical research” in the last few decades about the women who worked on the production side in Hollywood can be found in Chazelle’s film.

Universal pictures films produced