Brenon was among the early filmmakers who, before the rise of corporate film production, was a genuine "auteur", controlling virtually all creative and technical components in crafting his pictures.

[11] At the age of 29, Brenon advanced to screenwriting and film editing for the Independent Moving Pictures Company (IMP), later to become Universal Studios.

[24] Brenon reached the apogee of his creative powers while at Paramount during the late silent period, emerging as "a craftsman of the highest order" and for his renowned cinematic style.

Two films most characteristic of “the Brenon style” were his adaption of two J. M. Barrie fantasies, the highly theatrical renditions of Peter Pan (1924), starring Betty Bronson and A Kiss for Cinderella (1925).

[26] Brenon enlisted the talents of James Wong Howe and J. Roy Hunt to achieve outstanding cinematography and lighting effects.

[27] Biographer Charles Higham provides these critiques of the films: "Peter Pan’s encouragement of kidnapping, vengeance and murder deserves a whole psychological study in itself, and Brenon’s direction brings out its viciousness in the scenes when the children slowly prod a pirate to death at sword’s point, force Captain Hook to walk a plank, or giggle at his doom in the maw of a crocodile.

""A Kiss for Cinderella celebrated materialistic acquisition with [a degree of] repulsiveness, and Brenon adds many vulgar touches to Barrie's scenes when the little London skivvy dreams of a socially successful marriage to Prince Charming, the epitome of bourgeois money-grubbing fantasy.

"[28]Film historian Richard Koszarski offers this appraisal of A Kiss for Cinderella: "As a followup to Peter Pan (1925), Brenon filmed as adaption of ... Barrie's A Kiss for Cinderella (1926), a sophisticated fantasy that historian William K. Everson has compared to Jean Cocteau's La Belle et la Bete (1946) ...

Despite extraordinary special effects, Barrie's deconstruction of the Cinderella myth - with an unhappy ending - was indeed quite unpopular with audiences..."[29]Perhaps Brenon's most highly successful commercial effort at Paramount was Beau Geste (1926), with actor Ronald Colman.

The P. C. Wren story about courage, brotherly love, and self-sacrifice and the supposed theft of the priceless Blue Water sapphire from Lady Brandon is a constant annoyance, but Brenon’s handling, replete with all the sadistic relish of his 1925 Peter Pan, is more cinematically interesting then usual.

": “I wouldn’t give a hang for an actor without temperament...the amount and quality of temperament distinguishes a good actor from a bad one...During my years as a director, it has my pleasure, my pleasure to work with some of the most temperamental stars of the screen: Alla Nazimova, Norma Talmadge, Percy Marmont, Ernest Torrence, Betty Compson, Richard Dix and many others.

I find that the more temperamental an actor is, the easier it is for them to grasp the subtleties of the role (accented) and imbue it with life, instead of merely playing a part.”[34]Richard Koszarski adds that "Pola Negri, Lon Chaney, Nazimova and Norma Talmadge had some of their finest moments in Brenon’s films, (while carrying on uncontrollably elsewhere) ... his directorial success with the widest range of silent stars remains unparalleled.

"[35] Brenon, described once as an "Irish curmudgeon" while on the set, was typical of the old-school “auteur” directors of the early film era, but this behavior became anachronistic when corporate studio executives were ascendant in the 1920s.

In the 1997 book, The Speed of Sound: Hollywood and the Talkie Revolution 1926–1930, he issued these comments on his colleague: “So many of the silent film directors were phonies.

Biographer Charles Higham observed that "the talkie revolution firmly closed an era for many figures ... Herbert Brenon and James Cruze never made another interesting picture.