French director

The world's first woman director has been perhaps over-romanticised in some quarters, but she nevertheless had a remarkable career by any standards. The youngest of four daughters of a Parisian businessman, she spent part of her early childhood in Chile before being educated in Paris. Her father died when she was quite young, and she saw shorthand typing as a means to financial independence. It was through her mother's charity committee work that Guy met Léon Gaumont in 1897 and was taken on by him as a secretary. Gaumont was expanding from the construction and marketing of projectors to a full film service. This meant producing films, for which Gaumont turned to his enterprising secretary, who (working with camerman Anatole Thiberville) was to become chief producer of Gaumont film from 1897 to 1906, with an output (still a matter of some confusion) numbering hundreds of titles. Among these are the much-cited La Fée aux Choux (1900, remade in 1902), a copy of Lumière's Arroseur Arrosé (1897), La Vie du Christ (1898-99) in eleven tableaux, a second La Vie du Christ in 1906, and scores of short sound films made from 1902 using the Gaumont Chronophone process. Initially the greater part of Gaumont production was actuality film (including many dance films), but from 1903 there was an increasing emphasis on fiction. The films grew longer and Guy produced such comparatively ambitious titles as L'Assassinat du Courrier de Lyon (1904) and Esmerelda (1905), based on Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Towards the end of her time at Gaumont she saw in a strong team of new filmmakers, notably Victorin Jasset (who designed her ambitious and distinctive La Vie du Christ of 1906) and Louis Feuillade. In 1906 however she married Anglo-French Gaumont cameraman Herbert Blaché and went with him when he was sent in 1907 to manage the Gaumont office in New York.

In 1910, having given birth to a daughter and keen to return to filmmaking, Guy-Blaché (as she now became) founded her own production company, Solax, minor but lively producers on the American scene for three years, with Guy-Blaché directing many films herself, notably A Child's Sacrifice (1910) and Dick Whittington and his Cat (1913). On being released from his Gaumont contract in October 1913 Herbert Blaché replaced Solax with Blaché Features, moving on to form the US Amusement Corporation in April 1914. For both compnies Guy-Blaché directed several films, now of feature length. From 1914 to 1917 she also made features starring Olga Petrova for Popular Players and Plays, another Herbert Blaché company. The Blachés were divorced in 1922, Alice returning to France, but she failed to find further employment in the film industry. She wrote some children's books, but the remainder of her life was spent in obscurity until the French government bestowed on her the Legion d'Honneur in 1953. She returned to the United States in 1964 to live with one of her daughters and died in a nursing home in Mahwah, New Jersey. As interest in early women filmmakers continues to grow Alice Guy has become an important figure in an alternative history of the cinema. As further films of hers come to light, her reputation can only grow.

Luke McKernan