Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Infobox person Alice Ida Antoinette Guy-Blaché (Template:Née Guy; {{#invoke:IPA|main}} ; 1 July 1873 – 24 March 1968) was a French pioneer film director.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> She was one of the first filmmakers to make a narrative fiction film,<ref name="Biography Alice Guy-Blaché">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> as well as the first woman to direct a film. From 1896 to 1906, she was probably the only female filmmaker in the world.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She experimented with Gaumont's Chronophone sync-sound system, and with color-tinting, interracial casting, and special effects.<ref name="The New York Times 2019">Template:Cite news</ref>

She was artistic director and a co-founder of Solax Studios in Flushing, New York. In 1912, Solax invested $100,000 for a new studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, the center of American filmmaking prior to the establishment of Hollywood. That year, she made the film A Fool and His Money, probably the first to have an all-African-American cast. The film is now preserved at the National Center for Film and Video Preservation at the American Film Institute for its historical and aesthetic significance.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Early life and educationEdit

In 1865,<ref>Archives de Paris, Marriages, 18 Juilliet 1865, Clichy Hauts de Seine, 4 E/CLI_66.</ref> Guy's father, Émile Guy, an owner of a bookstore and publishing company in Santiago, Chile and Valparaíso, Chile, married Marie Clotilde Franceline Aubert. The couple returned to Santiago after the wedding in Paris. In early 1873, Marie and Émile lived in Santiago, with Alice's four siblings.Template:Citation needed

There was a devastating smallpox epidemic in Chile in 1872 and 1873.<ref>New York Times, South America, Terrible Ravages of Small-Pox on the West Coast, 26 September 1872. British Medical Journal, vol. 1, 1875</ref> Émile and Marie Guy brought all four of their children to Paris, where Alice was born. In her autobiography, Alice refers to this as her mother's attempt to make sure "her fifth child should be truly French".Template:Sfn Her father returned to Chile soon after her birth, and her mother followed a few months later. Alice was left in the care of her grandmother in Carouge, Switzerland.Template:Efn When Alice was three or four, her mother took her to South America.Template:Sfn

At the age of six, Guy was taken back to France by her father to attend the Faithful Companions of Jesus boarding school. It was sometimes referred to as Sacred Heart after it was relocated to France. (The Sacred Heart is associated with the Jesuits who were banned in Switzerland.) The Faithful Companions of Jesus was a separate order. The school where Alice Guy lived was in Veyrier-sous-Saleve in France. The building still exists 100 meters from the Swiss border. The mother superior, Emilie Guers, was close to the foundress, Marie-Madeleine de Bengy, for 25 years (1833-1858). They lived together in the Mother House in Carouge for 15 years (1833-1848). When Sophie Barat's Sacred Heart convents were expelled from Switzerland in 1847, the foundress Marie-Madeleine and Emilie Guers went to Veyrier-sous-Saleve in France to purchase a property just in case the Faithful Companions were also expelled from Switzerland. The foundress moved to Paris in 1848 to give the boarding school a lower profile. After that, Emilie Guers managed to stay in Carouge for another 28 years, until 1875. Other religious groups left voluntarily under pressure, but Mother Emilie made the government of Geneva kick her out. When the school was finally expelled in 1875, Mother Emilie moved the school to Viry for two years while the school was being built in Veyrier-sous-Saleve. The school moved from Viry to Veyrier-sous-Saleve in 1877, two years before Alice arrived. Her sisters were already there. Mother Emilie, a native of Geneva, expelled from her own country on short notice, regularly told the story of her expulsion. Template:Efn Alice heard the story repeatedly and mentioned it in her memoirs. Alice called the Mother Superior "a very great lady who wanted to make us strong, accomplished women." Template:Efn

Alice's older brother died on 16 May 1880 at age 13.<ref>Actes d'état civil, Archives de Paris, 1880 Décès, 18eme, V4E5022, page 20</ref> Guy and her sister Louise were moved to a convent in Ferney a few years later and then brought back to Paris.Template:Citation needed

Guy's father died on 5 January 1891 of unknown causes.<ref>Archives de Paris, Décès 6e arr. 5 Janvier 1891 V4E5962</ref> Following his death, Guy's mother got a job with Mutualité maternelle which was founded on 20 May 1891.<ref>Le Temps, 25 February 1892, La mutualité maternelle</ref> Her mother was unable to keep that job and thereafter Guy trained as a typist and stenographer, a new field at the time, to support herself and her mother. She landed her first stenography-typist job at a varnish factory. In March 1894, she began working at the 'Comptoir général de la photographie' owned by Félix-Max Richard. Léon Gaumont later took over and headed the company.<ref name="Alice Guy Blaché Cinema Pioneer" />Template:Sfn

CareerEdit

Secretary to Léon GaumontEdit

Template:Multiple imageIn 1894, Alice Guy was hired by Félix-Max Richard to work as a secretary for a camera manufacturing and photography supply company. The company changed hands in 1895 due to a court decision against Félix-Max Richard, who sold the company to four men: Gustave Eiffel, Joseph Vallot, Alfred Besnier, and Léon Gaumont. Gustave Eiffel was president of the company, and Léon Gaumont, thirty years Eiffel's junior, was the manager. The company was named after Gaumont because Eiffel was the subject of a national scandal regarding the Panama Canal.<ref>Les premieres annees de la societe L. Gaumont et Cie, Correspondance commercialed de Leon Gaumont 1895–1899. Corcy, Malthete, Mannoni, Laurent, Meusy, 1998</ref> L. Gaumont et Cie became a major force in the fledgling motion-picture industry in France. Alice continued to work at Gaumont et Cie, a decision that led to a pioneering career in filmmaking that spanned more than 25 years and involved her directing, producing, writing and/or overseeing more than 700 films.<ref name="autogenerated1">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Although she initially began working for Léon Gaumont as his secretary, Guy became familiar with his clients, relevant marketing strategies, and the company's stock of cameras. She also met a handful of pioneering film engineers such as Georges Demenÿ and Auguste and Louis Lumière.<ref name="Guy1996">Template:Cite book</ref>

Alice Guy and Gaumont attended the "surprise"<ref name="Entretiens avec Alice Guy">Template:Cite book</ref> Lumière event on March 22, 1895. It was the first demonstration of film projection, an obstacle that Gaumont, the Lumières, and Edison were all racing to solve. They screened one of their early films Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory, which consisted of a simple scene of workmen leaving the Lumière plant in Lyon. Bored with the idea of captured film only being used for the scientific and/or promotional purpose of selling cameras in the form of "demonstration films," Guy was confident that she could incorporate fictional story-telling elements into film. She asked Gaumont for permission to make her own film, and he granted it.<ref name="screen">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Early filmmaking at Gaumont Film CompanyEdit

Alice Guy made her first film in 1896. Its original title may have been La Fée aux Choux (The Fairy of the Cabbages) or The Birth of Children, or it may have had no title at first. The scene Alice described as her debut effort does not match either the 1900 version of La Fée aux choux or the 1902 version, retitled Sage-femme de première classe which has been found in film archives. By comparing Alice's descriptions of her debut effort with the two films that are available for us to view, we discover differences that indicate there was a third film that came first. The 1896 film seems to be lost. However, multiple points of confirmation indicate that there were three different La Fée aux choux.Template:Sfn A 30 July 1896 newspaper describes a "chaste fiction of children born under the cabbages in a wonderfully framed chromo landscape," and provides other details that confirm Alice Guy's description of her first film. "Before very long," Alice Guy reported in 1912, "every moving picture house in the country was turning out stories instead of spectacles and plots instead of panoramas."<ref name="How a Woman Makes a Fortune 1912">Template:Cite journal</ref>

From 1896 to 1906, Alice Guy was Gaumont's head of production and is generally considered the first filmmaker to systematically develop narrative filmmaking. She was probably the only female director from 1896 to 1906.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Her earlier films share many characteristics and themes with her contemporary competitors, such as the Lumières and Méliès. She explored dance and travel films, often combining the two, such as Le Boléro performed by Saharet (1905) and Tango (1905). Many of Guy's early dance films were popular in music-hall attractions such as the serpentine dance films – also a staple of the Lumières and Thomas Edison film catalogs.<ref name="Alice Guy Blaché Cinema Pioneer">Template:Cite book</ref>

In 1906, Guy made The Life of Christ, a big-budget production for the time, which included 300 extras. She used the illustrated James Tissot New Testament as reference material for the film, which featured 25 episodes and was her largest production at Gaumont to date. In addition to this, she was one of the pioneers in the use of audio recordings in conjunction with the images on screen in Gaumont's "Chronophone" system, which used a vertical-cut disc synchronized to the film. She employed some of the first special effects, including using double exposure, masking techniques, and running a film backward.Template:Sfn During her tenure at Gaumont, Guy hired and trained Louis Feuillade and Étienne Arnaud as writers and directors and hired set designer Henri Ménessier and art director Ben Carré.<ref name="artforum">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Later works at The Solax CompanyEdit

In 1907, Alice Guy married Herbert Blaché, who was soon appointed the production manager for Gaumont's operations in the United States. After working with her husband for Gaumont in the U.S., the two established their own business in 1910, partnering with George A. Magie in the formation of The Solax Company, the largest pre-Hollywood studio in America.<ref name=autogenerated1/>Template:Sfn

With production facilities for their new company in Flushing, New York, her husband served as production manager and cinematographer. Alice Guy-Blaché worked as the artistic director and directed many of its releases. Within two years, they had become so successful that they invested more than $100,000 into new and technologically advanced production facilities in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Many early film studios were based in Fort Lee at the beginning of the 20th century.<ref>Template:Citation</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Citation</ref> This made her the first woman to own her own studio and studio plant.<ref name="artforum"/> It was mentioned in publications of the era that Guy-Blaché placed a large sign in her studio that read: 'Be Natural'.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 1913, Guy-Blaché directed The Thief, the first script sold by future Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston.<ref name="screen"/>

Guy-Blaché and her husband divorced several years later, and with the rise of the more hospitable and cost-effective climate in Hollywood, their film partnership also ended.Template:Citation needed

LegacyEdit

Template:Box quote In the late 1940s, Alice Guy-Blaché wrote an autobiography. It was published, in French, in 1976 and was translated into English a decade later with the help of her daughter Simone, daughter-in-law Roberta Blaché, and the film writer Anthony Slide. Guy-Blaché was concerned with her unexplained absence from the historical record of the film industry. She regularly communicated with colleagues and film historians, correcting previously made and supposedly factual statements about her life. She crafted lengthy lists of her films as she remembered them, with the hope of being able to assume creative ownership and receive legitimate credit for them.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Guy-Blaché was the subject of a National Film Board of Canada documentary The Lost Garden: The Life and Cinema of Alice Guy-Blaché by director Marquise Lepage, which received Quebec's Gémeaux Award for Best Documentary.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 2002, film scholar Alison McMahan published Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Guy-Blaché is considered by some to have been the first female filmmaker,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and from 1896 to 1920, she directed over 1,000 films, some 150 of which survive, and 22 of which are feature-length. She was one of the first women, along with Lois Weber, to manage and own her own studio: The Solax Company. Few of her films survive in an easily viewable format. In December 2018, Kino Lorber released a six-disc box, Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers, in cooperation with the Library of Congress, the British Film Institute, and others. The first disc of the set is devoted to the films of Alice Guy-Blaché. It includes Matrimony's Speed Limit (1913), which was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2003.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The 2018 documentary film Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, directed by Pamela B. Green and narrated by Jodie Foster, which opened at the Cannes Film Festival (Cannes Classics), deals with Guy-Blaché's life, career, and legacy.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Because of Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché, many of Guy-Blaché's films were restored and preserved, and a pillar in her name will be featured at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures.Template:Citation needed

In September 2019, Guy-Blaché was included in The New York Times series "Overlooked No More".<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

As reported by Deadline in 2021, Pamela B. Green is developing a feature biopic about Alice Guy-Blaché.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Guy-Blaché was an early influence on both Alfred Hitchcock and Sergei Eisenstein. Hitchcock remarked, "I'd be over the moon with the Frenchman George Méliès. I was thrilled by the movies of D.W. Griffith and the early French director Alice Guy."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

In his Memoirs, Eisenstein described an unnamed film he had seen as a child that continued to be very important to him. This film was identified as Alice Guy-Blaché's The Consequences of Feminism (1906) during the making of the documentary Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite book</ref>

Personal lifeEdit

Template:Multiple image Alice Guy-Blaché's marriage meant that she had to resign from her position working with Gaumont. The couple was sent by the Gaumont company to Cleveland to facilitate the franchise of Gaumont equipment. Early in 1908, the couple went to New York City where Guy-Blaché gave birth to her daughter, Simone, in September 1908.Template:Sfn Two years later, Guy-Blaché became the first woman to run her own studio when she created Solax in Gaumont's Flushing studio. In 1912, when she was pregnant with her second child, she built a studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and continued to complete one to three films a week. On 27 June 1912, Reginald, her son, was born. To focus on writing and directing, Guy-Blaché took her husband into Solax in 1913 "for feature production and executive direction".<ref name="Moving Picture Exhibitors Association 1913">Template:Cite journal</ref>

Shortly after taking the position, Herbert Blaché started a film company named Blaché Features, Inc. The couple maintained a personal and business partnership for the next few years, working together on many projects. In 1918, Herbert Blaché left his wife and children to pursue a career in Hollywood.Template:Sfn Alice Guy-Blaché almost died from the Spanish flu pandemic in October 1918 while filming her final film Tarnished Reputations.<ref name="Wid's Daily 1918 p. 7 ">Template:Cite journal</ref> Following her illness, she joined Herbert in Hollywood in 1919 but they lived separately. She worked as Herbert's directing assistant on his two films starring Alla Nazimova.Template:Sfn

Alice Guy-Blaché directed her last film in 1919. In 1921, she was forced to auction her film studio and other possessions in bankruptcy. Alice and Herbert were officially divorced in 1922. She returned to France in 1922 and never made another film.Template:Sfn

DeathEdit

Alice Guy-Blaché never remarried, and in 1964 she returned to the United States to live in Wayne, New Jersey, with her older child, her daughter, Simone. On 24 March 1968, at 94, Alice Guy-Blaché died in a nursing homeTemplate:Sfn in New Jersey. She is interred at Maryrest Cemetery.

Accolades and tributesEdit

On December 12, 1958, Guy-Blaché was awarded the Légion d'honneur, the highest non-military award France offers. On 16 March 1957, she was honored in a Cinémathèque française ceremony that went almost unnoticed by the press.Template:Sfn

In 2002, Circle X Theatre in Los Angeles produced Laura Comstock's Bag-punching Dog, a musical about the invention of cinema, and Alice Guy-Blaché was the lead character. The musical was written by Jillian Armenante, Alice Dodd, and Chris Jeffries. In 2011, an off-Broadway production of Flight<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> premiered at the Connelly Theatre, featuring a fictionalized portrayal of Guy-Blaché as a 1913 documentary filmmaker.Template:Citation needed

In 2004, the Fort Lee Film Commission unveiled a historical marker dedicated to Alice Guy-Blaché at the location of Solax Studio. In 2012, for the centennial of the founding and building of the studio, the Commission raised funds to replace her grave marker in Maryrest Cemetery in Mahwah, New Jersey. The new marker includes the Solax logo and notes Guy-Blaché's role as a cinema pioneer.Template:Citation needed

In 2010, the Academy Film Archive preserved Alice Guy-Blaché's short film The Girl in the Arm-Chair.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 2011, the Fort Lee Film Commission successfully lobbied the Directors Guild of America to accept Alice Guy-Blaché as a member.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She was subsequently awarded a posthumous "Special Directorial Award for Lifetime Achievement" at the 2011 DGA Honors.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 2013, Guy-Blaché was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.<ref name="New Jersey Hall of Fame">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name="New Jersey Hall of Fame 2014">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 2018, film journalist Véronique Le Bris founded the Alice Guy Prize, granted yearly to highlight the woman film-maker of the year.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

A square in the 14th arrondissement of Paris is named the Template:Ill in her honor.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 2019, the re-edited and expanded version of Eisenstein's memoirs, Yo. Memoirs by Sergei Eisenstein mention Alice's The Consequences of Feminism and its influence on Eisenstein.<ref name=":0" />

In 2021, Yale University opened its new state-of-the-art screening room, named the Alice Cinema, after Alice Guy-Blaché.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 2021, French-German TV channel Arte produced a documentary on Alice Guy-Blaché titled Alice Guy, the unknown lady of the 7th art, directed by Valérie Urréa and Nathalie Masduraud, voiced by Agnès Jaoui and Maud Wyler.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 2022, Rowman & Littlefield published a new edition of The Memoirs of Alice Guy Blaché, edited by Anthony Slide and translated by Simone Blaché and Roberta Blaché. This memoir contains a new introduction by Slide.Template:Sfn

The Golden Door Film Festival gives an award named in her honor.Template:Citation needed

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of her birth, around July 1, 2023, several French institutions celebrated Alice Guy and her legacy:

  • The Cinémathèque Française held a special day of hommage with the showing of 8 of her films.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> It also uploaded a 2K resolution digitization of the very first known making-of in the history of cinéma, Alice Guy tourne une phonoscène (Alice Guy shoots a phonoscene - [the ancestor of the music video], 1907, by anonym) on its online film portal, Henri.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • French postal service La Poste launched a special edition stamp at her effigy which was presented by her great-grandson Thierry Peeters at philately center Carré d'Encre on July 3, 2023.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • Newly re-opened Paris museum of history of immigration Cité nationale de l'histoire de l'immigration shares within its new permanent exhibition several of Alice Guy's films, amongst which L'Américanisé (1912), to illustrate the experience of immigrants to the United States (like Alice Guy herself).<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Selected filmographyEdit

These films were produced by Gaumont (1896–1907), Solax (1910–1913), or others (1914–1920).Template:Sfn Template:Colbegin

|CitationClass=web }}</ref> Template:Colend

See alsoEdit

NotesEdit

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ReferencesEdit

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SourcesEdit

Further readingEdit

  • Template:Cite book This contains many passages and words not translated into the English editions.

External linksEdit

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