In which decade was the world’s first-ever female film director? Was it perhaps the ’60s? Or possibly the ’20s? No. Try the ’90s — the 1890s. Try 1896, to be exact.
At age 23, Alice Guy was a pioneering director of narrative films at France’s Gaumont Film Company. She was also the first woman to run a film studio. Throughout her career, she directed and produced over 1000 films in Europe and America. Film historians had all but ignored Alice Guy before her death in 1968. The release of her autobiography and memoirs in the 1970s set the record straight on a few things that history had forgotten. Credit for her films was either missing or given to others.
In the early days of the motion pictures industry, credits were often not attached to films – this convention was still to come. Alice Guy was the pioneer of early experiments in narrative cinema, including close-ups, colour enhancements, synchronised sound, location filming and naturalistic performance.
Early years
Alice Guy (1873-1968) begins her career as a secretary for Léon Gaumont in the 1890s. Although initially considered too young for the job, her charm and humour win through. Léon is experimenting with a new invention for moving pictures film projection. However, the Lumière brothers get there first when they organise a private screening.
1895: Alice Guy attends that very first Lumière screening of the workers’ exit from the Lumière factory. It’s a cinématographe 35mm motion picture film projected onto a sheet. Actualities (filming of events) are the most popular first films to be produced. At this point, Alice suggests to Léon that she films some scenes with short narratives. He allows her to do so — but only in her own time and out of office hours. She writes out narratives and designs simple sets for them. Alice works hard to make films during daylight hours whilst continuing her secretarial work into the late evenings. Her films find some success while she remains a secretary. She becomes a filmmaker before the term even exists.
1896: Léon Gaumont forms the Gaumont Film Company. Alice Guy becomes Head of Production before women even have the right to vote in France. Alice has to continuously defend her position.
1906: a 35-minute moving image directed by Alice Guy makes a big impression on its release. Life of Christ is considered a lengthy work. It’s one of the first-ever narrative films. Action, lighting and camera work are all highly accomplished. Alice uses real nearby locations in many of her films, setting the house style for the new era of Gaumont films.
Alice Guy in the USA
1907: Léon Gaumont opens the largest cinema in the world. It’s re-constructed from the L’Hippodrome Pavilion (built for the Paris Exposition of 1900). It screens newsreels, actualities and narrative films. This is also the year that Alice Guy marries Herbert Blaché, a sales manager at Gaumont and a cameraman on her latest film Mireille. Léon Gaumont sends Herbert to manage the office in New York. Alice goes with him and changes her name. The couple relocates to America with an idea to make sound films (mostly musicals) and promote the Chronophone franchise. In the USA, the kinemascope (viewing without a projector) is more popular than in Europe. The couple settles in Flushing, New York. Alice gives birth to daughter Simone (1908) but is missing her cinema work. She has directed and produced over 1000 narrative films to date.
1910: Alice establishes the Solax Studio. At first, she rents an underused Gaumont studio space at Flushing. Alice prefers to make emotional narratives. A great example of this is Falling Leaves, (watch below) in which a little girl ties leaves back onto a tree after being told her sister will surely die after the leaves fall in the autumn.
1912: Alice has another child named Reginald. Alice Guy Blaché is the highest-paid woman in the USA. She makes headline news and everyone knows her name and reputation. She moves her studio to Fort Lee, New Jersey, to expand her company. Solax produces two one-reel films per week (around 15 minutes long). She brings her kids to the studio and becomes an authority on cinema technology. Her sets are meticulous, using real locations and striving for ever more complicated, sophisticated techniques. This pioneer of cinema continually pushes the potential of film making.
1913: Herbert’s contract with Gaumont ends. Alice makes him president of Solax so that she can focus on writing and directing. He launches his new company Blaché Features using the Solax Studios lot, the same facilities and actors. Blaché Features becomes the more dominant studio to Solax. Herbert goes on to form the US Amusement Corporation in 1914.
The star system begins taking shape in the 1910s as directors begin to use the same performers repeatedly. Alice has signs pinned up around the studio calling for the actors to ‘Be Natural’. One of her first regular stars is theatre actress Olga Petrova, one of the first big stars of the movies. In 1914 Olga stars in The Tigress. They make four films together between 1914 and 1917. Alice Guy Blaché also directs Doris Kenyon, Bessie Love, Ethel Barrymore and an actress named Catrine Calvert.
Asking actors to be natural allows Alice to make compelling close-ups and more expressive and emotional storytelling. After 1915 film dramas get longer in duration and Alice favours love stories with a happy ending.
Alice Guy Blaché is not interested in critics. She cares more about what audiences think of her films. She is invited to give lectures by academics. Being the first female film maker, she has an interesting perspective on the process. She supports women getting the vote and believes cinema is a perfect medium for women to make a successful living and to be creative. However the industry and Alice’s own life is about to change dramatically.
During World War I, film production ceases in Europe and small film production companies are being bought up by bigger conglomerates. Alice receives offers to buy Solax but turns them all down. Film production in Hollywood begins to grow as the year-round pleasant climate make more economic sense for the studios.
1918: The Blaché children become seriously ill with measles. Herbert Blaché leaves his wife and children and goes off to Hollywood with actress Catrine Calvert.
1919: Alice Guy has an even more terrible year. Whilst working on a film, she is wiped out physically by the Spanish ’flu pandemic, emotionally by her failed marriage and financially by the declining success of her independent studio. Alice and the children join Herbert briefly in Hollywood for respite, whilst living in separate accommodation with her children, but she is left defeated. She sells her studio at Fort Lee and all contents are auctioned off in the midst of a polio epidemic in the region. At least Herbert hires Alice to direct a film for him.
Alice Guy returns to Europe
1922: Following divorce, Alice Guy returns to France with her children. She is bankrupt and sad.
Alice starts her new life in Nice, France and tries to retrieve the film career she has lost. But she feels it is too late for her and focuses instead on her children. She writes children’s stories and magazine articles under male pen-names. She signs her own name to screenplays. However, opportunities for women in this area are too scarce. Alice lives in Belgium and Switzerland following her daughter’s diplomatic career moves. She begins research to find her own lost films but can’t find any films made in France, plus the US films are not released under her name. She can only find a few.
back in the USA
1927: Alice returns to the USA to try to find some of her films but they are nowhere to be found. It becomes clear that she will not have a second chance to work in the film industry she pioneered.
1947-52: Alice moves to Washington DC with her daughter Simone. Beginning work on her autobiography, she discovers that a recent book written by Léon Gaumont has omitted her from French film history.
1954: Alice begins a corespondence with Léon Gaumont’s son, Louis. He gives a speech in Paris later that year: “Madame Alice Guy Blaché, the First Woman Filmmaker,” claiming that Alice has been unjustly forgotten.
1955: she receives the Legion d’Honneur in France. This is the highest recognition for her contribution to the film industry.
1964: Alice returns to the USA in 1964 to live with her daughter and dies in 1968, at age 95, following a series of strokes.
Over 700 films were made with Alice Guy Blaché as director, scriptwriter or producer (or sometimes all three). She worked in almost every style, format and genre. Only just over 100 of her films have been found around the world to date.
Alice Guy could not find a publisher for her autobiography. It was published posthumously in 1976. She was the only known female film producer in existence for seventeen years and the world’s first female film director. Her legacy and influence on the industry are notable yet she did not receive public recognition until her autobiography was published. Perhaps she can now be given her rightful place as a pioneer of the moving image. Let’s hope so.
SOURCES AND RECOMMENDED READING
Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer (Whitney Museum of American Art), edited by Joan Simon, Yale University Press (2009)
Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema (Continuum, 2002) by Alison McMahan
The Memoirs of Alice Guy Blaché by Roberta Blaché, Alice Guy Blaché, Simone Blaché and Anthony Slide, Scarecrow Press (1996)
Films about Alice Guy:
Lost Garden, The Life and Cinema of Alice Guy Blaché (1992) – Marquise Lepage.
Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché – Pamela B. Green
