In the early history of motion pictures, credits were nearly always at the beginning of movies and were handed out so sparingly that they rarely took more than two minutes of screen time.

The 1922 vampire classic ''Nosferatu,'' a kind of special-effects vehicle of its day, credited only 11 cast members and 5 others, including the director and cinematographer, and the credits lasted 1 minute 35 seconds.

But by the late 1960's and early 70's, credits had grown so long that filmmakers began to shift most of them to the end of movies, giving them the freedom to grow even longer, especially with the rise of blockbuster movies with special effects and computer-generated imagery.

According to Baseline, which compiles information about movies, the original ''Star Wars'' in 1977 listed 143 people in its credits. In 1999, ''The Matrix'' listed 551, including Longy Nguyin, a sports masseuse. Last year, ''The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers'' listed 559 names, ''Finding Nemo'' listed 642, and the third installment of the ''Matrix'' series had 701.

In the world of animation, as just one example to show how the complexity of newer movies involves many more people, ''Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'' in 1937, the first full-length animated feature movie, listed only 24 animators. The credits for ''Finding Nemo'' list 52 animators, plus 104 computer-graphics-imagery artists, divided into teams for jobs like ''sharks,'' ''reefs,'' ''schooling and flocking'' and ''ocean.''

But ''credit creep,'' as some people in Hollywood have called it, is happening even in movies without multinational teams of computer programmers. In independent film shorts, for example, where many people work without being paid and a screen credit is their only form of compensation, credits can sometimes last a fourth as long as the short itself. In some movies with limited budgets, travel agencies and other companies are sometimes given credit -- in essence free advertising in a prestigious format -- if they agree to work for less.

And in big-budget movies with powerful stars, the stars often succeed in winning screen credit for anyone who has anything to do with their performances. In ''Master and Commander,'' the list of attendants to Russell Crowe alone reads like the staff list at a small company: his costumer, two hairstylists, a makeup artist, two special makeup artists, a stunt double, a stand-in, a trainer, a dialect coach, a swordmaster, three violin coaches, two assistants and the name of the company that provided his personal security.