Alice Guy-Blaché - The First Woman Director

Although I’ve always been interested in films, especially the musicals of the Golden Age of Hollywood thanks to my mum, I’m no film expert. I’ve taken it for granted that men were responsible for the innovations in film, moving pictures and all that jazz.

What a surprise to discover, only a couple of weeks ago, it wasn’t a man who pioneered a lot of those innovations in the fledgling industry, but a woman – Alice Guy-Blaché.

Alice Guy-Blaché (Wikipedia)

Alice’s parents married in Paris in 1865 but lived in Santiago, Chile where her father, Emile, owned a bookstore and a publishing company. They returned to Paris in 1872-73 with their four children because of a smallpox epidemic in Chile.

On 1st July 1873, Alice Ida Antoinette Guy was born in Saint-Mandé. When the family eventually returned to Chile, Alice was left in the care of her grandmother in Switzerland. When Alice was about three or four, her mother, Marie, returned to take her to join the family in Chile.

When she was six, Emile took her back to France to join her sisters at school.

Sadly, Emile died in 1891. To support herself and her mother, Alice started training as a typist and stenographer.

In 1894, she began working as a secretary for the engineer and inventor, Léon Gaumont, at the ‘Comptoir général de la photographie’.

The following year, Alice accompanied Gaumont to the Lumiére brothers’ demonstration of film projection, the first of its kind.

Whereas most seemed to only be interested in using captured film for scientific purposes or as a promotion for selling cameras, Alice clearly thought outside the box – she saw its potential as a way to tell stories.

She asked Gaumont to allow her to pursue her idea. As she recalled decades later in a television interview, Gaumont’s reply had been, “It seems like a silly, girlish thing to do, but you can try if you want. On one condition: that your office work does not suffer.”

No one had any idea where this new invention would lead, which explains Gaumont’s comment of it being “a silly, girlish thing to do”. And it was possibly this, coupled with Alice’s forward-thinking imagination, that led to her becoming the first woman director.

She directed her first film in 1896, a 60-second fictional narrative, ‘La Fée aux Choux’ (The Cabbage Fairy). It shows a ‘fairy’ plucking newborn babies from cabbages. Amazing as it is, I find myself distracted by the nonchalant way the ‘fairy’ handles what appears to be actual newborns.

From 1896 to 1906, Alice was the Gaumont film company’s head of production, and directed nearly all the company’s films. Most of the early films only ran for a couple of minutes.

In 1901, Alice started working on longer, more detailed projects like ‘La Esméralda’ in 1905, based on ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’, and ‘La Vie du Christ’ (The Life of Christ) in 1906 with a large cast of extras.

Alice was instrumental in pioneering the now-familiar techniques of this exciting new medium, including double exposure, and running a film backwards. Between 1906 and 1907, she directed short ‘sound’ pictures, using Gaumont’s ‘Chronophone’ system to sync audio recordings to the images on the screen. She also preferred to film in real locations.

Alice married another Gaumont employee, Herbert Blaché, in 1907. Marriage meant she had to resign her position at the company, but her business relationship with Gaumont continued. The couple moved to America went Gaumont sent Herbert there to establish a ‘Chronophone’ franchise. When the franchise failed, Herbert was sent to New York to manage Gaumont’s studio in Flushing. Problems with obtaining membership with the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC) meant the Flushing studio was barely used.

Alice decided to take advantage of the situation and set up her own company, Solax, and made silent films using the Flushing studio. With Gaumont facilitating the distribution of her films, Solax was soon making enough money for the Blachés to afford their own house and for Alice to build a second studio in New Jersey.

The couple had a daughter, Simone, in 1908 and their son, Reginald, was born in 1912.

By 1913, after a successful two years, the company began to suffer. Distribution problems and the declining popularity of short films were to blame. Herbert started his own company, Blaché Features, which used the Solax studio and even the same actors.

Eventually, when changes in the industry put many independents, including the Blachés out of business, both Alice and Herbert worked for some of the bigger studios.

The couple separated in 1919 when Herbert left to pursue a career in Hollywood. When she nearly died of Spanish influenza, Alice joined him there, but they lived separately. However, Alice worked as his assistant director on a couple of films. They divorced in 1920.

After handling the bankruptcy action for her studio, Alice returned to France with the children in 1922.

Alice Guy-Blaché never made another film. This may be because, by the 1920s, the movies had undoubtedly become big business, and was dominated by men.

This was, indeed, a shame when you consider, during her time in America, Alice had made more than 1000 films, including comedies, westerns and dramas. Many of these, whether intentionally or not, featured women in starring roles.

In the last years of the Second World War, Alice stayed with her daughter, Simone, who worked for the American Foreign Service, in Switzerland. She’d begun writing her memoir and also tried to find her films.

Unfortunately, few of her films had survived the First World War and even those were presumed lost. One could say, typically, much of her work had been attributed to, either, her male assistants or Herbert; and she’d been left out of Gaumont’s official history.

However, by giving interviews, she managed to gain some recognition for the pioneering work she’d done. And in 1953, Alice was awarded the Légion d’honneur.

Alice and Simone returned to America in 1964.

On 24th March 1968, Alice Guy-Blaché died in a nursing home in New Jersey, aged 94.