In 1996, the singer Juliette put her on the same level as Arletty and Marie Curie in her song Rimes femmes. However, few were those who then knew of the existence of Alice Guy, in any case of the unique place she occupies in the history of world cinema, and from which she was erased in spite of herself.
Yet, as Martin Scorsese declared in 2011, giving her belated honors as part of the Directors Guild of America, the union of film directors: “Alice Guy was an exceptional director, of a rare sensitivity, with an incredibly poetic gaze and great instinct. She has written, directed and produced over a thousand films. And yet, she has been forgotten by the industry she helped create. »
Rediscovered in the United States by Pamela Green, author of documentaries such as Be Natural, the untold story of Alice Guy-Blaché, in France by novelist Emmanuelle Gaume and journalist Véronique Le Bris, Alice Guy is making headlines again. In 2021, Catel and Bocquet publish a comic strip, Valérie Urrea and Nathalie Masduraud sign the documentary Alice Guy, the unknown of the 7th art, broadcast on Arte, Jean-Jacques Annaud is currently preparing a series for France Télévisions. And for the first time in France, a young academic dedicated a doctoral thesis to him. A stamp bearing her effigy will even appear on July 3… To give her back the place she deserves in the Pantheon of cinema pioneers.
Born in Saint-Mandé (Val-de-Marne) in 1873, Alice Guy grew up in a family of intellectuals between South America and Switzerland. His father is a publisher and bookseller. When her family returns from Chile, ruined, she settles in Paris. When her father died, she took a job as a shorthand typist in the service of Léon Gaumont, director of the Comptoir Général de la Photographie. She is 20 years old and discovers the ingenious effervescence of the time.
All of Paris marches past the studio cameras, Zola, Eiffel, the beautiful Otero. One day in 1895 was decisive: on March 22, she accompanied Léon Gaumont to the first session of animated images organized by the Lumière brothers in a building on the Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés. She witnessed the birth of cinema. Quickly, the cinematograph is democratized. “I found it a bit banal, she will say in her memoirs [La Fée-cinéma, reissue at Gallimard]. I asked Gaumont to make sketches and to stage them. He grants it on the condition that his mail does not suffer!
“Even though she never claimed this title, the exact date of completion still remains a mystery. The version found in Sweden dates from 1900. If she filmed one in 1896, as she claims, it is considered lost”, wishes to clarify Coraline Refort, doctoral student at the Institute for Research on Cinema and Audiovisual , who is preparing a thesis on the director. What is certain is that Alice Guy imposes her style and her subject.
Between 1897 and 1907, Alice Guy made more than two hundred films of various genres: comedy, fantasy, religious, burlesque, operas, sound films – the first playbacks – or colorized. Scriptwriter, production manager, special effects specialist… She’s at every position! As she tells in Nathalie Masduraud and Valérie Urrea’s documentary, she discovers “interesting little things” that create the current cinematic language, such as opening a door and exiting on the other side of the set, waterfalls, absurd scenes, acrobatics.
It achieves a success comparable to that of the fairy tales of Georges Méliès. “But while Méliès is remarkable for its technology, Alice Guy is one of the first to see cinema as an art,” says Coraline Refort. Success is guaranteed with the public at the fairgrounds where the films are shown.
She also innovated by turning La Vie du Christ in the form of episode films, or by having herself filmed filming in Le Phonoscène. It’s the invention of the making-of! But the competition is fierce. Some of her scenes are found at Méliès and Ferdinand Zecca, so she puts her scripts under lock and key… When the Gaumont studios were created in the Belleville district in 1905, there she was, at 32, at the head of the largest theater of world view.
His marriage sounded the death knell of the French period. In 1907, she left her place to her assistant Louis Feuillade and left for the United States with Hubert Blaché, commissioned by Léon Gaumont to sell her phonograms. She follows him and very quickly starts making films again. “French humor perceived as vulgar, she puts herself in the American taste, directs westerns with cowgirls, police officers, action films”, says Coraline Refort.
In 1910, she created a production company, Solax, and built her own studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey, the city of cinema at the time. She innovates again by filming outdoors, with stuntmen, wild animals or trained dogs. “She was perceived as exotic, journalists flocked every week to interview her,” adds the doctoral student. Until 1917, Alice Guy dominated world cinema.
“Léon Gaumont, with whom she maintains a correspondence, helps her son, but does not reinstate her,” says Coraline Refort. She made suggestions to the Studios in Nice, the city where she settled, developed a project in England, but she did not have enough to finance it. Under the pseudonym of Antoine Guy, she writes stories for children. She will end her life following her daughter, who works for the embassies.
In 1953, she wrote her autobiography, which was refused by publishers. “She sought a form of self-legitimation,” analyzes Coraline Refort. In 1955, Louis Gaumont, Léon’s son, presented her with the Legion of Honor and she attended a retrospective of her work at the Cinémathèque in 1957. Her memoirs were not published until 1976 at the initiative of the Musidora collective – named after star actress Louis Feuillade – eight years after his death at the age of 94.
In the 1970s, a feminist movement took hold of her story and revived her films. A hundred of his works were finally found. Including a reel in a trunk under a tree in Australia! From her first films, she proved to be avant-garde: in La Fée aux choux, babies come out of vegetables, in Madame has desires, a pregnant woman has absolutely irresistible desires, leaving her husband to ridicule himself.
Since 2018, film journalist Véronique Le Bris has been organizing the Alice-Guy prize, discovery in April for her book 100 Great Films by Directors. His will: “Give visibility to women directors forgotten in a history of cinema built by men. A recurring event “to make his name familiar and keep his memory alive.” This year, at the Max-Linder cinema, four films by Alice Guy drawn from the Gaumont collection are screened ahead of the winning film, Revoir Paris. “Soon Alice Guy will be heritage, soon she will be the premiere,” writes director Céline Sciamma in the preface to Alice Guy’s reissued memoir. So be it.
À LIRENitrate, by Céline Zufferey, Gallimard, March 2023, 208 pages, 19.50 eurosAlice Guy, graphic novel, screenplay by José-Louis Bocquet, drawing by Cathy Muller, Casterman, September 2021, 400 pages, 24.95 eurosTO SEEExhibition Alice Guy until June 17 at the Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions in Draguignan (Var)Alice Guy, the unknown of the 7th art, by Valérie Urrea and Nathalie Masduraud, ARTE France, 10.7 Productions, 2021, available on Arte boutique.
