Alice Guy-Blaché, the first woman film director, was an active participant in the earliest days of cinema. Her career began in 1896 for the French company, Gaumont Chronophone. She made hundreds of short (less than ten minutes) films during the earliest years of cinema development. In 1907 she accompanied her newly wed husband, Herbert Blaché, to the United States. After several years of mostly non-film work, she returned to filmmaking in 1910, forming her own production company, Solax Films. Solax Film produced one-reel films for presentation in nickelodeon theaters. In 1914, as feature films replaced one-reelers, Guy-Blaché transitioned to making features in her studio. Guy-Blaché’s career gradually declined during the 1910s, and she directed her final film in 1919. Divorced from her husband, Guy-Blaché lived with her daughter Simone, in France or in America, from 1920 until her death in 1968. In her later years she compiled a filmography and wrote her memoirs as a pioneer in the film industry.
Although only three of Guy-Blaché's feature films are known to survive, more than 130 of the short films she produced, directed, wrote, and/or supervised between 1896 and 1913 are extant.
Filmmaking in France, 1896-1907
The first public exhibition of a motion picture was in Paris, on December 28, 1895, to demonstrate the Lumière Company camera and projector machine, the cinématographe. The leading manufacturers of camera equipement were in competition over the patents and sales of their machines and publically exhibited short films to promote their machines. In 1896, Alice Guy made a film for her employer, camera manufacturer Léon Gaumont, to promote Gaumont’s camera-projector, the chronographe. More films followed. Gaumont, and other camera-projector manufacturers, including Méliès, Pathé and Lumière, soon realized that the films themselves had commercial value. Short movies were increasingly presented in live theater, cabarets, and fairs.
Gaumont appointed Alice Guy as the head of film production for his company. Over the next eleven years, she directed, produced or supervised hundreds of short films, most running less than three minutes. Guy’s first film La fée aux choux (The Cabbage Fairy) (1896) runs about fifty seconds. A fairy, an appealingly feminine young woman dressed as for a ball, dances gracefully down an aisle of large cabbages. She tilts her head as if hearing something and lifts a naked infant from behind (or maybe meant to be out of) a cabbage. She lays the child on the ground. Some more dancing, another head tilt, and she lifts up a second infant and lays it down. A third head tilt, but the third arrival is a doll, and she puts it partially behind the cabbage. A little more dancing and the film ends. The content is derived from a well known French folktale about the method of baby arrival. Babies are found in cabbage patches, boys among the cabbages, girls among the roses. The babies in the film must all be boys!
La fée aux choux is representative of Guy’s earliest films, about one to two minutes in length and featuring one or two people performing simple movements. Dancers were frequent subjects, for example in Danse fleur de lotus (1897), Danse serpentine par Mme. Bob Walter (1899), and Danse serpentine (1900). Some of the dance films are hand-tinted in pastel colors, including Les Fredaines de Pierrette (The Escapades of Peirette) (1900) and Au Bal de Flore (1900). Other hand-colored films include La Fee Printemps and Le Fumeur D’opium. Comic films usually involve a gag or a short routine. Two extant films involve the prankish activities of boys. In Le pecheur dans les torrent (The Fisherman at the Stream) (1897) boys trick a fisherman, and in Baignade dans le torrent (Bathing in a Stream) (1897) the boys are jumping around in the water. In Chez le Photographer (1900) the photographer is exasperated by a client who cannot sit still and spoils the picture. In Le Cambrioleurs (The Burglars) (1898) inept burglers are chased by police over rooftops. In Chirurgie fin de siecle (Turn-of-the-Century Surgery) (1900) a surgeon saws an arm and a leg off a patient; the surgeon’s assistants reconnect the limbs with a paste-like compound. Guy made some trick films of the type popularized by Georges Méliès. In Chez le magnéticier (1898) a hynotist waves his arms and switches clothing between a woman (a man in drag) and a policeman. Sage-femme de Premiere Classe (First Class Midwife) (1902) is a variation of La Fee Aux Choux. A couple, with Guy herself playing the husband, visit the fairy in the cabbage patch in order to receive a baby.
During 1898 and 1899, films featuring scenes derived from theatrical presentations of the Life of Christ, known as Passion Plays, were becoming established as valid forms of public entertainment. These films were in tableau form, following the conventions of the theater. Guy made a series of films on the Life of Christ, including La Vie du Christ (1898), La Fuite en Egypt (1898), Jesus Devant Pilate (1898), and Le Crucifiemont (1899). These films are predecessors to her most ambitious Gaumont film, La Vie du Christ (1906), in 25 scenes.
After 1902, in addition to her customary films, Guy produced and directed 150 synchronized sound films — phonoscenes — to be shown using Gaumont’s chronophone system. This two machine system produced a film synchronized with the sounds of a disc played on a phonograph. The recording was made first, and the film was made with a specialized camera. Successful production of these films was difficult, and projection was tricky and easily disrupted. One disc ran for only a minute or two. As one-reel story films running for about twelve minutes became the dominant form, synchronized sound films were abandoned.
In 1904, Gaumont hired additional personnal. Guy trained her new assistants, Étienne Arnaud, Louis Feuillade, and Romeo Bosetti, in writing and direction. They became important filmmakers in early French cinema; Feuillade succeeded Guy as head of production at Gaumont. Set designer Henri Ménessier and his assistant Ben Carré followed Guy to America and worked for her at Solax.
After 1902, French cinema began the transition to story films. Guy’s films become longer and more complex. Several extant films provide good examples. In La Charite du prestidigitateur (The Magician’s Alms) (1905, three minutes), a morality tale, a ragged old man begs alms from a magician who conjurs up an elaborate feast, new clothes, and a metamorphosis into a younger age. This newly remade man, striding confidently, is opportuned by a ragged beggar who he dismisses coldly. The magician, who has followed, instantly changes him back into the beggar, indicating displeasure that he did not give to another the same generosity that he had received. Le matelas alcoholique (The Drunken Mattress) (1906, nine minutes) is a physical comedy in which a drunk gets accidentally sewn up in a mattress. The woman (as usual, a woman character in a physical comedy is portrayed by a man in drag) who sewed the mattress struggles to take it back to its owners as it bucks and rolls and falls into holes. La resultants du feminisme (The Consequences of Feminism (1906, seven minutes) examines the results of role reversal of the sexes. (After she came to America, Guy reworked these two films for release by her film company, Solax.) Course a la sausage (Race for the sausage) (1907, four minutes) is an amusing chase film. A dog seizes the end of a long string of sausages and runs off with it. The dog pulls the grocer, who grabs hold of the other end, into people on the street, greatly upsetting their daily routines. Many of these people join the chase, upsetting more people and so on.
Guy’s longest running and most complex production for Gaumont was a filmed passion play, la Vie du Christ; La Naissance, La Vie, et La Mort du Christ (The Life of Christ; The Birth, Life and Death of Christ) (1906, 33 minutes). The lengthy porduction had 25 scenes, each introduced with a title card, and the elaborate sets were designed by Henri Ménessier and Robert-Jules Garnier.
Filmmaking in America, 1910-1919
In 1907, Alice Guy married another Gaumont employee, Herbert Blaché. Shortly after the wedding, Gaumont sent Herbert to America to promote a chronophone franchise in Cleveland. Alice Guy-Blaché, giving up her position with the company, accompanied her husband. She helped him with setting up and running the device, but after months of work, the chronophone proved troublesome to operate in a theater setting, and the clients withdrew.
In 1908, the couple moved to New York where Herbert Blaché managed the American subsidiary of Gaumont, a studio in Flushing. Alice Guy-Blaché gave birth to a daughter, Simone, and became a stay-at-home mother.
By late 1910, the lure of filmmaking drew Guy-Blaché to resume her career. The Gaumont studio in Flushing was producing films but had plenty of space for another company. Guy-Blaché founded her own production company, Solax Studios, with a shining, smiling sun-man as its first symbol. The sun-man is prominent in the earliest Solax ads in the trade magazines. The nickelodeon boom of 1906-1909 had made the one-reel story film the dominant film form. She began producing and directing one or two one-reel films a week.
Guy-Blaché’s first film for Solax, A Child’s Sacrifice, released in October 1910, featured child actress Magda Foy as the daughter of a striking laborer. To obtain money for her family, the child attempts to sell her doll. The emotional story involves her meeting with the owner of her father’s company and later preventing bloodshed during the strike. Magda, called the Solax Kid, stayed with the company until its transition to feature length films in 1913.
Guy-Blaché produced unpretentious melodramas and comedies; these films were usually centered upon the difficulties besetting lovers or threatening a family. Guy-Blaché wrote and directed at least half of them and supervised all. Along with child actress Magda Foy, Solax employed an ensemble of actors and crew. Actors included Romaine Fielding, Darwin Karr, Blanche Cornwall, Vinnie Burns, Marion Swayne, and Fraunie Fraunholz. The actors did not receive screen credit before 1914. After several months of working alone, Guy-Blaché hired Wilbert Melville, Edgar Lewis, and Edward Warren as additional writers and directors. Each director specialized in a specific genre. Set designer Henri Menessier and his assistant Ben Carré had worked with Guy-Blaché in France.
The Solax films were distributed through the Gaumont Company. The films were distributed to exchanges, from which they were borrowed by the owners of nickelodeons and shown on their film programs. Initially, Gaumont was a member of the Motion Picture Patents Company (MPPC), the major source of films to the exchanges. In 1912, Gaumont broke off from MPPC, and Solax along with Gaumont became part of the group of independent companies opposed to MPPC. Solax had been prospering, but as an independent, the company had access to fewer venues, and its income declined.
At this same period, Guy-Blaché invested in a new glass-house studio for Solax in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where many other film studios were situated. At this location, the studio produced films of one-, two-, or three-reels. During 1913, Solax continued to make one-reelers while also transitioning to features. Dick Whittington and His Cat (1913), her most ambitious Solax project, is three reels and runs 45 minutes.
Herbert Blaché’s contract with Gaumont expired in June 1913. The French company left the US at the beginning of World War I. Herbert Blaché started a new company, Blaché Features, using the Solax plant and actors. Herbert and Alice, alternating producing and directing, moved production into longer films (four reels or more), following the fast developing trend in the industry. Between 1914 and 1919, Guy-Blaché directed not only feature films for her own company but also as a hired director for other companies.
In 1914, Popular Plays and Players, a small production company within the Metro
Pictures film distribution network, leased the Solax facilities and hired both
Alice Guy-Blaché and Herbert Blaché. Each of them directed six films for the
company. Popular Plays had recently signed the Russian-Polish
actress Olga
Petrova, then appearing in Panthea on Broadway. Petrova commuted between the Fort
Lee studio in the morning and the Broadway theater in the evening. Born Muriel
Harding in Tur, England, she had altered her name and origin to give herself a
more exotic aura, as exotic, alluring females were having a fad at the time. From
late 1914 through 1915, Guy-Blaché directed five films starring Petrova, the best
known, and most heavily advertised, player she had ever directed. Seemingly cast
into the then-popular, semi-erotic mode of Theda Bara (another phony exotic),
Petrova played (to the hilt if the stills are any guide) fascinating and dangerous
women in steamy melodramas.
Petrova debuted in The Tigress, released November, 1914. The
Variety reviewer remarked on the
wild plot line and ridiculous coincidence.
He also noted the
good photographic and light effects, including tricky use of reflectors in
prison scenes,
directorial touches from Guy-Blaché and her crew. One of the Petrova films is even
named The Vampire (1915). The Variety reviewer wrote that
The Vampire
could have been worked with greater punch … and will not create any
great stir. With the name of Olga Petrova and the title, the film should attract
some noise at the box office.
Petrova’s final film with Guy-Blaché, What Will People Say, was
released in January 1916. These films seem to have been moderately successful.
Petrova’s career continued through 1918, when the vamp
went out of style.
None of the Fort Lee films survive.
The Petrova films may have had some box office success, but the Blaché’s were not rehired by Popular Plays and Players. Herbert and Alice returned to independent production. She made seven films for her own company, now called The U.S. Amusement Corporation. Fresh young actors, Doris Kenyon and Catherine Calvert, starred in two each. Herbert Blaché directed two more with Calvert. These films, distributed by a variety of distribution companies, negotiated on a film by film basis, did not receive significant audience response. The Ocean Waif (1916), an extant film starring Kenyon and Carlyl Blackwell, was distributed by the International Film Service, owned by newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst.
In early 1917, Guy-Blaché directed The Empress, starring Kenyon and
stage star Holbert Blinn for Popular Plays and Players, Inc. The conventional plot
concerns a young married woman who nearly loses her husband’s trust when a
blackmailer threatens her over an innocent, but immoral appearing, incident in her
past. The reviewer of Moving Picture World described the film as
not remarkable from any point of view.
The modest film was little-seen
among the many movies released at that same time.
In 1918, Guy-Blaché directed The Great Adventure, a comedy, starring Bessie Love and Flora Finch for Pathé Exchange. The film had good box office returns, better than her other features. However, this success did not lead to further comedic assignments.
In 1918, Guy-Blaché co-directed with Herbert her final film, Tarnished Reputations, released in 1920, for the independent production company Perret Pictures. The film, starring Dolores Cassinelli, was made at the Pathé Studio in New York and distributed by Pathé Exchange. Léonce Perret, a small producer who had been with Gaumont Pictures in France, came to the US after the war to study the American film industry. While in America, he produced a few films for his own company. He returned to France in 1921.
The film industry was moving west, and in 1919 Herbert Blaché moved to Hollywood. Guy-Blaché followed him. She was an assistant director for several films Herbert directed for Nazimova Productions but did not obtain any work for herself. Despite her extensive experience as a producer and director, Alice Guy-Blaché’s expertise was not wanted in the American film industry.
Alice returned to France with her children. She attempted, but failed, to find work in the French film industry, including with Gaumont Pictures where she had started. After 28 years of filmmaking, her film career had ended.
Later Career of Herbert Blaché
Herbert Blaché had an unremarkable nine year career in Hollywood during which he directed about twenty films. His most notable film was Buster Keaton’s first feature, Saphead (1920), a routine comedy enlivened by Keaton's burgeoning comic abilities. He also directed Ethyl Barrymore, Alla Nazimova, Alice Brady, and King Baggot. His career concluded in 1928 with a pair of Hoot Gibson westerns. After his film career ended, Herbert Blaché remained in Southern California and died in Santa Monica in 1953.
Personal Life
Alice Ida Antoinette Guy was born in Paris in 1873, the youngest of five children. As a child she lived with her family in Chile for a few years before returning to France for her schooling, Alice’s father died when she was about 14, and she lived wth her mother as she finished her education.
At 20, Alice, trained as a typist and stenograher, began working at a photography company, Comptoir General de la Photographie. When Leon Gaumont took over the company, he made Alice Guy his office manager. Gaumont sold his own motion picture camera. In 1895, Alice and Gaumont attended a demonstration by the Lumiere brothers of a film made by their 35mm motion picture camera, the first public showing of a motion picture. In early 1896, for the Gaumont company, Alice wrote and directed La fee aux choux, her first film and one of the earliest films in motion picture history. Ten years later, industrious and hardworking Alice had an extensive filmography of hundreds of short films.
Alice met Herbert Blaché, a camerman for Gaumont, in 1906. They married early in 1907. A few days after the wedding Gaumont sent Herbert to America to promote the chronophone. Alice left her position with Gaumont films and accompanied her new husband to Cleveland. In early 1908, Gaumont hired Blaché to manage the Gaumont studio in Flushing, New York. Alice remained at home with their first child, Simone.
By 1910, Alice wanted to resume filmmaking. The Gaumont studio in Flushing, New York, was underutilized and Alice set up her own company, named Solax Films, in the available space. In the four years since Alice had made her last film, the film industry had advanced. Public attendance at the movies had increased greatly. Small neighborhood theaters, known as nickelodeons, showed programs of one-reel story films. Thousands of small theaters across the country showing several different programs a week required a large number of films to fill the demand.
Alice understood the types of films required from her company. For much of the next four years, she produced, wrote, and/or directed about seventy one-reel films. In addition to all this activity, in 1912 she supervised the construction and opening of a new studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, and her second child, Reginald, was born.
The transition to feature film ended the era of one-reelers. Alice continued her career in independent production but also worked for other film production companies. Her debts rose as the revenues from her films declined. Distribution of her films was difficult. The Solax studio, its loan still active, was expensive to maintain, and she rented it out. The film business was relocating to Hollywood, and production in Fort Lee was rapidly declining.
By 1917, Alice and Herbert had been married for ten years and the marriage was strained as Herbert became involved with other women. In 1919, he moved to Hollywood, and Alice followed. She assisted Herbert with a couple of films, including her final film, Tarnished Reputations (1920), procuced by an associate of Gaumont, Léonce Perret. Their mutual association with Gaumont may have gained Herbert and Alice the assignment.
Mostly without work, Alice and the children lived in a small bungalow. Herbert did not live with them. In 1920, she and her children returned to Fort Lee to oversee the bankruptcy auction of her Solax properties. By 1922, the Solax bankrupcy was completed; the studio was sold at a loss.
Her marriage collapsed, Alice returned to France with her children. She attempted, but failed, to find work in the French film industry, including with Gaumont Pictures where she had started. After 28 years of filmmaking, her career was over.
For the remainder of her life, Guy-Blaché lived with her daughter, Simone, upon whom she was financially dependent. After World War II, living in Washington DC, she wrote her memoirs and attempted to compile a filmography.
In her later years, Guy-Blaché was recognized in France for her pioneering work. Film historians, such as Jean Mitry and Victor Bachy, researched and wrote about her career. In 1955, she was awarded the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest nonmilitary accolade. She was honored in a Cinémathèque Française ceremony in 1957. In 1963, she was interviewed for the television show Hieroglyphes.
In 1965 Alice and Simone moved to New Jersey where Alice died in 1968 and was buried. On her birthday, July 1, 2012, the Fort Lee Film Commission, founded to honor the early filmmakers who had clustered in Fort Lee, placed a new stone on her grave commemerating the first woman director in cinema history who had built a film studio, Solax, in Fort Lee a century earlier.
Guy-Blaché's memoirs, Autobiographe d’une Pionniere du Cinema (1873-1968), were published posthumously in 1976. The American version (in English translation) was published in 1986 as The Memoirs of Alice Guy Blaché.
Career Consideration
A cinema pioneer, Alice Guy Blaché was present at the beginning of public presentation of film and made films throughout the earliest period of motion picture development, starting with the films of attraction, progressing to the first story films, into the period of one-reelers for the nickelodeons, and the first years of feature films. At each of these stages she made numerous interesting, paradigmatic films.
Capable and determined, she was one of the few women who owned and supervised a film production company and built a studio in which to make her films. She was involved in all facets of production: writing, directing, producing, and hiring talent. Few women have ever had so much control.
Although a recognized figure in the industry, her career declined with the end of the nickelodeon era. Her feature films, apparently not significant money-makers, did not receive any particular recognition upon release. Her final film was a profitable, but it was too late to attract any further producer interest. By the late 1910s, Alice was among the older filmmakers who were being replaced by a new, overwhelmingly male, generation. By 1920, women remained a significant minority among film writers and designers, and women directors were few. By the late 1920s, only Dorothy Arzner remained.
Alice built her studio in New Jersey just prior to the rise of feature films and the movement of the film industry to the West Coast. Film production was consolidating into fewer, larger, and newer studios. Alice moved to Hollywood with Herbert, but she did not obtain any significant work. The studio in New Jersey, disused and unwanted, was lost to bankrupcy.
For many years it seemed that most of Alice Guy Blaché’s films were lost, but many of the Gaumont films and the Solax one-reelers have been recovered. Unfortunately, of her feature films, only three are known to exist.
Further Reading