Alice Guy-Blaché

By Linda Harris Sittig

While my husband and I lived in rentals for 90 days this year, waiting for our new house to be finished, we watched films every night.

A lot of films.

We revisited old favorites and fascinating documentaries and tuned into new releases. And I did not pay much attention to the directors until it hit me that most names were male.

So, I searched to see if there had been any female directors in the early days of cinema. And that is how I stumbled across Alice Guy-Blaché.

The Young Alice

Born in Paris in 1873 after her parents escaped a smallpox epidemic in Chile, Alice grew up surrounded by books. When her parents decided to return to Chile, Alice went to live with her French grandmother.

Throughout her childhood, she lived in both Chile and France. But when her father died in1891, Alice suddenly needed to support her mother. She trained as a typist and, by 1894, was working for a French camera company. The company’s manager was Leon Gaumont, who became involved in France’s fledgling motion picture industry and chose Alice as his secretary.

The following year Gaumont invited Alice to accompany him to the Lumière event, the first demonstration in France of a filmed screen projection. Alice was fascinated but decided that a narrative film with a story would be more enjoyable.

In a bold move, she wrote a screenplay and convinced Gaumont to let her direct it on the screen. That movie, La Fée Au Choux (The Fairy of the Cabbages), earned Alice the fame of being considered the first filmmaker to develop narrative filmmaking systematically. And she was probably the only female director from 1896 to the turn of the twentieth century. Sadly, that first 1896 film of hers no longer exists.

Alice Begins Her Extraordinary Career

From 1896 – 1906, Alice became the head of the production for Gaumont’s company. She went on to direct, produce, or supervise approximately 600 silent films with him, each lasting anywhere from one minute to 30 minutes, but all were narrative dramas or comedies.

Then in 1907, Alice Guy resigned from her position with Gaumont and married a Gaumont employee, Herbert Blaché. Gaumont sent them to America to open an American arm of the Gaumont Production Company. And after a rocky start, the couple went to Flushing, Queens, New York, and helped launch the Gaumont Chronophone company to have Gaumont’s silent films distributed as licensed films.

Their most significant competitor was Thomas A. Edison.

In another bold move, in 1910, Alice decided to start her own company, Solax. She continued to make silent films using the Gaumont studio and distributing them through Gaumont. By 1912, Solax was making enough money that Alice built her own $100,000 studio for Solax in Fort Lee, New Jersey. It was the largest pre-Hollywood studio in America, and she became the first American woman to own a film production studio.

To give you some perspective on the $100,000, a loaf of bread in America in 1912 cost 7 cents.

Several of the Solax films that stand out today are the ones where the hero was a woman. However, Solax as a company only thrived financially for two years, and once the popularity of short films ceased, Alice and Herbert then worked as directors for other film companies.

In 1918 Alice almost died from the Spanish Flu, and Herbert moved her to California, mainly because he wanted to be a part of Hollywood. They divorced in 1920, but both continued to direct films. After Herbert died in 1953, Alice returned to France, where she lectured on filmmaking and continued to write scripts.

Alice’s Legacy

She directed, produced, or supervised about 1,000 films in her lifetime—an astonishing accomplishment. And even if you’ve never heard her name, she became a legend in filmmaking. So much so that Alfred Hitchcock often quoted her.

She died in New Jersey at age 94 and is buried in Mahwah, New Jersey.

However, in September 2019, Alice Guy-Blaché was included in The New York Times series titled “Overlooked No More.”

I love it!

The next time you watch a movie, pay attention to who directed it.

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Meanwhile, you can read more about me on my website: www.strongwomeninhistory.com. And stay tuned. My newest book, Opening Closed Doors, should be out by the first of the year with a strong young woman you won’t forget.

~ Linda