Founders Series Part 2: Alice Guy-Blache
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When I was in Film History class, as both an undergrad & a graduate student, I learned that the motion picture was invented not in the US by Thomas Edison, but in France by brothers August & Louis Lumiere in 1895. Furthermore, I was taught that Georges Milies, another Frenchman, had pioneered early narrative film with his short, A Trip to the Moon in 1902. Fast forward to the next decade & the studios began to emerge in New York & would move to California not long after. Lost in this rather rote overview of film history, however, is one of the most influential & important filmmakers that not one of my film history classes, textbooks or professors even bothered to mention, the first female movie director Alice Guy-Blache.
Guy-Blache was a 22 year old secretary, working for French film equipment manufacturer Gaumont when she witnessed the initial showing of the Lumiere brothers' motion picture. A little more than a year later she approached her boss, asking if she could make films to help show the promise & potential in the company's film cameras. The year was 1896 & Leon Gaumont agreed to allow her to make films, provided she do so on her own time. Guy-Blache believed that film could be used for something better than the recording of daily life, as most of the Lumiere's films had captured. |
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She thought the medium was best suited to tell stories & set about to write, edit, produce, stage & direct The Cabbage Fairy (1896), a retelling of the fairy tale about where babies come from. Over the next 10 years she would go on to become the head of production & creator of the house style for Gaumont, directing hundreds of films, inventing such staples of filmmaking as the close-up, while also pioneering the use of synchronous sound, tinted color, editing & narrative flow. She directed westerns, melodramas, musicals, & epics, but was best known for her comedies. Her film The Consequences of Feminism (1906) even reverses traditional sexual roles for comedic & social impact.
She left Gaumont & France to come to America with her husband Herbert Blache, who was to head the US unit of a French film company in Cleveland. In 1910, she formed her own production company, Solax, & began making films again. As in France she wrote, produced, & directed hundreds of films during Solax's 4 year existence. At one point, the Solax facilities were deemed the most advanced on the East coast. Before moving to Hollywood all the major studios that we would know today, Fox, Paramount, Universal & MGM, among many others, all had facilities in Fort Lee, New Jersey, yet Solax had the best.
Guy-Blache was a traditionalist & in following her husband to the US, she was fulfilling her wifely duties, but when she returned to filmmaking it wasn't at the expense of a family. While she was running Solax & creating all aspects of its output, she still had time to have 2 children. At one point, when questioned about marriage, she admitted that if she ever did get married it would only be to allow her to have children.
When Solax folded in in the late teens, through a series of bad luck, a fire & primary film productions' move to Hollywood, Guy-Blache found sporadic film work through the rest of the teens, but moved back to France in 1920, without her husband. Essentially, her career as a filmmaker was over. She was 47 years old. In her 25 year career she had created or overseen more than 1,000 films & had outlasted Edison, the Lumieres & Meslies, yet she couldn't get work in France.
Guy-Blache was a traditionalist & in following her husband to the US, she was fulfilling her wifely duties, but when she returned to filmmaking it wasn't at the expense of a family. While she was running Solax & creating all aspects of its output, she still had time to have 2 children. At one point, when questioned about marriage, she admitted that if she ever did get married it would only be to allow her to have children.
When Solax folded in in the late teens, through a series of bad luck, a fire & primary film productions' move to Hollywood, Guy-Blache found sporadic film work through the rest of the teens, but moved back to France in 1920, without her husband. Essentially, her career as a filmmaker was over. She was 47 years old. In her 25 year career she had created or overseen more than 1,000 films & had outlasted Edison, the Lumieres & Meslies, yet she couldn't get work in France.
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For the remaining 48 years of her life she wrote magazine articles, lived with one of her daughters & was determined that her name not be forgotten. She eventually wrote one of the best autobiographies in film history, but when she died it hadn't yet been published. Likewise, when she died in 1968 only 3 of her films were believed to still exist. By the time the autobiography was published, 8 years later, an additional 30 films had been found in archives throughout the world. It would take another 20 years, however, for film archivists to find an additional 130 of the more than 1,000 films credited to her as a writer, director, producer or production head.
Sadly, however, many of the traditional film histories & textbooks still neglect to even mention Guy-Blache, let alone devote significant attention to her legacy. While she was a woman of her era, she was also an extraordinary artist & innovator many decades ahead of her time. It is often said that history is written by the victors & film history is no different. Thankfully, her papers now reside at the Museum of Modern Art, several of her films are housed in the Library of Congress & film retrospectives have been held around the world. But her name is still known to very few outside of scholars on early film.
It so happens that I came across a documentary produced in 2018 called Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache that opened my eyes to this wondrous pioneer. The title is taken from perhaps her greatest contribution to film, the constant reminder to her actors to "be natural" when on camera. The film is narrated by Jodie Foster & tracks not just her film career, but her amazing life & includes interviews with Guy-Blache from the '50's & '60's. For fans of film or women's history, Be Natural is a no-brainer, must see. For anyone curious about how history is often incomplete, biased or misleading, I recommend this incredibly well told story. A selection of Guy-Blache's films are now available on blu-ray & also worth seeking out.
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache is available on TCM Watch and can be rented or purchased on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play or YouTube.
Sadly, however, many of the traditional film histories & textbooks still neglect to even mention Guy-Blache, let alone devote significant attention to her legacy. While she was a woman of her era, she was also an extraordinary artist & innovator many decades ahead of her time. It is often said that history is written by the victors & film history is no different. Thankfully, her papers now reside at the Museum of Modern Art, several of her films are housed in the Library of Congress & film retrospectives have been held around the world. But her name is still known to very few outside of scholars on early film.
It so happens that I came across a documentary produced in 2018 called Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache that opened my eyes to this wondrous pioneer. The title is taken from perhaps her greatest contribution to film, the constant reminder to her actors to "be natural" when on camera. The film is narrated by Jodie Foster & tracks not just her film career, but her amazing life & includes interviews with Guy-Blache from the '50's & '60's. For fans of film or women's history, Be Natural is a no-brainer, must see. For anyone curious about how history is often incomplete, biased or misleading, I recommend this incredibly well told story. A selection of Guy-Blache's films are now available on blu-ray & also worth seeking out.
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blache is available on TCM Watch and can be rented or purchased on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, Google Play or YouTube.