In the late 1890s and early 1900s , the artistry and industry of the movies was being created by people who were basically making it up as they went along . The pioneers of film — the people who compute out how to project a make a motion effigy and then what to do with those flickering shadows — included the Lumière Brothers , Georges Méliès , and Thomas Edison .
And Alice Guy - Blaché .
Who was Alice Guy - Blaché ? She was a manager , manufacturer , and screenwriter who was one of the first people — if not the first — to look at those flickers and realize they could be used to tell entire stories . She made hundreds of movies from 1896 or so until 1920 . She worked with special effects , take on emplacement , and shoot movies that had contemporize audio recordings . At one detail , she have and operated her own movie studio apartment . So why has she been forgotten ?
Alice Guy was born in France in 1873 and school in convent school . At the age of 21 , in 1894 , she got a job as a secretary for a photography company run by Léon Gaumont . A year later , she attended the first demonstration of a projected film by Auguste and Louis Lumière . Soon afterward , she asked Gaumont for permission to employ his camera to make a film of her own on her own fourth dimension .
At the clip , movies usually consist of shot depicting a crowd of people leaving a factory or of a moving railroad train ; fascinating curiosities , but not much more . Guy drop a line a book and produce and directed her tale film , The Cabbage Fairy(La Fée aux Choux ) , on the Gaumont property . It may have been the first motion picture to severalise a fictitious story — in this font , of a fairy growing baby in a cabbage patch .
From there , Guy was off and running . She became head of production for Gaumont ’s plastic film studio , which grew out of the still photography business . She made long motion-picture show and started using particular outcome such as hand tinting and double exposures . At Gaumont , her biggest picture wasThe Life of Christ , shot in 1906 , which has scene that featured hundreds of extra .
In 1907 , Alice Guy married Herbert Blaché , a cameraman with Gaumont , and resigned from the fellowship . The company broadcast Herbert to the United States to promote Gaumont ’s synchronized audio and photographic film system , and to head up Gaumont ’s U.S. branch . Alice went with him , and in 1910 , she set up her own film studio based in Flushing , Queens : the Solax Company . Solax made so many successful films that Alice was able to build a state - of - the - art film product studio in Fort Lee , New Jersey , a townsfolk that basically functioned as Hollywood before the picture motivate west .
At Solax , Alice Blaché continued her work as a director , completing movies at the rate of up to three a hebdomad . It was here that she advert a sign of the zodiac on the wall apprize her actors to “ Be Natural . ” In 1913 , she made her husband , who had last out with Gaumont , the president of Solax so that she could do more hands - on moving picture - making .
Around this time , Herbert Blaché also started his own film studio , naming Alice as vice Chief Executive . But the married couple was getting rocky . The movie manufacture was moving west to California and , in 1918 , Herbert leave Alice and their children to move with it . Her studio apartment went into bankruptcy and was sell off .
The Moving Picture World // Public Domain
Guy - Blaché made her last movie in 1920 and moved back to France with her children in 1922 . In the 1940s , she discovered that the first histories of the picture industriousness — even of the Gaumont Studio — were being write without mentioning her . She started give public talks about her oeuvre and wrote her memoirs . But recognition was slow in coming . Alice moved back to the United States for good in the sixties to live with her girl . She go in 1968 , at the age of 94 , and is buried in Maryrest Cemetery in Mahwah , New Jersey .
So why was she forget ?
" Alice ’s account is very complex . She is there at the giving birth of cinema . She is there at the birth of Hollywood in Fort Lee . She was a business woman , enterpriser , and a creator , " sound out Pamela Green , Centennial State - director of adocumentaryabout Guy - Blaché calledBe Natural : The Untold Story of Alice Guy - Blaché , alongside carbon monoxide - managing director Jarik van Sluijs .
It does n’t aid Guy - Blaché ’s tale that most of her work has been lose . Only about 140 or so of the more than 1000 picture she wrote , directed , or give rise have live , sometimes only in fragment , according to Green .
" What is interesting about Alice is that it was kind of her destiny . She got into cinema right at the good metre when she had the background of arise up , reading narration , and make love literature , euphony , and theater , ” Green toldmental_floss .
Now , Guy - Blaché ’s story is depart to get attending . In 2004 , a historic mark for her was placed at the web site of the Solax studio in Fort Lee . Green and her co-worker also hope to screen their docudrama at the Cannes Film Festival next year — and peradventure then Guy - Blaché will start to be appreciated as the pioneer she was .
