Alice Guy-Blaché - Infinite Women

Born: 1 July 1873, France
Died: 24 March 1968
Country most active: France, United States
Also known as: Alice Ida Antoinette Guy

The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).

Alice Guy-Blaché is a name you likely have never heard. She was a pioneer of the French and American film industries during the silent era and the first woman to have a career as a director, yet her work and career have largely been overlooked throughout history.

She was among the very first to use film to tell a narrative story, although for years she was largely uncredited as compared to Georges Méliès and the Lumière brothers. Only recently, has she been acknowledged for influencing many directors that came after her. Let’s take a look at articles on her life and career in our historic newspaper collection, Chronicling America.*

Alice Ida Antoinette Guy was born in Saint-Mandé, in Paris, France on July 1, 1873, to French parents Marie and Emile Guy. During her childhood, the Guy family moved between Chile and France. After the family was struck by multiple tragedies in her adolescent life, Alice sought employment outside the home in order to support her family.

In 1894, she worked as a stenographer (or, secretary) to French inventor, engineer, and industrialist, Léon Gaumont. Gaumont is considered a premier film producer who established the Gaumont Company, the first and oldest film company in the world. Guy was inspired by the premiere of the Lumière brothers’ Cinématographe motion picture system, combining camera, printer and projector, which was patented in 1895.

Motion pictures companies at the time “were chiefly engaged in merely photographing moving objects–a train speeding along and the ever-changing panorama of scenery, a parade passing, a boat race, etc.,” but Guy thought the movie-going public was interested in films with a “cast of characters, dramatic plot, and frequent changes of scene.”

”I thought that one might do better than these demonstration films,” Guy-Blaché wrote in her witty autobiography which was translated by her daughter, Roberta, and granddaughter, Simone, The Memoirs of Alice Guy Blaché. ”Gathering my courage, I timidly proposed to Gaumont that I might write one or two little scenes and have a few friends perform in them.” She directed her first film, “La Fée aux Choux” (“The Cabbage Fairy”), which debuted in 1896 when she was just 23. She was Gaumont’s Head of Production from 1896 to 1906.

In 1907, Guy married Herbert Blaché, a British-born film director, producer, and screenwriter who also worked for Gaumont. They left Paris for the United States and along with a third partner George A. Magie, established the Solax Company in Fort Lee, New Jersey. At the time, Fort Lee, located across the river from New York City, was the center of American filmmaking prior to the establishment of Hollywood.

Guy-Blaché believed in the economic independence of women. In a newspaper interview with the New-York Tribune in 1912, she stated, “we are today living in woman’s era and business is no more man’s exclusive sphere.” She took the role of president of the Solax Company and participated in the film industry as a director, scenarist (i.e., scriptwriter), and producer. During each workday at Solax, she came “into direct personal contact with all phases of the work carried on there” and behind the camera, she directed with a “voluble, pleasant voice.”

Even before the “talkies,” she directed the first sound films. She also used special effects, such as playing the film backward to create the illusion of going back in time. She was one of the first filmmakers to feature diversity in casting and comment on controversial topics. In 1912, she directed the comedy, “A Fool and His Money,” which was one of the earliest, if not the first, narrative films with an all-Black cast. Her film “A Man’s a Man” (1912) featured a Jewish protagonist and “The Making of an American Citizen” (1913) touched on difficult subjects, such as immigration and marital abuse. “My Madonna” (1915) was likely the first film by a female director to feature a female lead. Guy-Blaché directed, wrote, or oversaw upwards of 700 films throughout her remarkable career. “Tarnished Reputations” (1920) is said to be the last film she directed.

As more motion-picture facilities opened in Hollywood, California, the Solax Company along with other East Coast film companies lost revenue and faced bankruptcy. When her husband moved to Hollywood with an actress and the Solax Company was auctioned off, Guy-Blaché divorced and moved to France with her two children in 1922. Later in her life, she moved back to the United States and at one point, lived in Washington, DC. In 2003, her film, “Matrimony’s Speed Limit” was added to the National Film Registry.

The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.

Cinema pioneer Alice Guy-Blaché was the first female film director, but that didn’t keep a man from trying to write her out of history. Starting in 1896, she created more than 1,000 films for studio founder Léon Gaumont’s Gaumont Film Company and is considered the first director to systematically develop narrative filmmaking, as well as pioneering various filmmaking techniques. She was the company’s head of production for 10 years, yet she later discovered Gaumont had erased her from the company’s history —her name had been removed from most, if not all of her films, and she was not mentioned in the 1930 publication of the company’s history. She spent years communicating with colleagues and film historians to correct the record and compiled long lists of her films, to the best of her recollection, to repair the damage to her reputation. Meanwhile, having been forced out of Gaumont’s employment after her marriage, she and her husband started their own studio, making her the first woman studio owner. Yet she was not welcome at distributor meetings because, as her husband alleged, her presence would “embarrass the men.”