Alice Guy Blach: Lost Visionary of the Cinema [Paperback]

Alison McMahan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 20, 2003 | ISBN-10: 0826451578 | ISBN-13: 978-0826451576

Alice Guy Blach (1873-1968), the world's first woman filmmaker, was one of the key figures in the development of narrative film. From 1896 to 1920 she directed 400 films (including over 100 synchronized sound films), produced hundreds more, and was the first - and so far the only - woman to own and run her own studio plant (The Solax Studio in Fort Lee, NJ, 1910-1914). However, her role in film history was completely forgotten until her memoirs were published in 1976. This book tells her life story and fills in many gaps left by the memoirs. Guy Blach's life and career mirrored momentous changes in the film industry, and the long time-span and sheer volume of her output makes her films a fertile territory for the application of new theories of cinema history, the development of film narrative, and feminist film theory. The book provides a close analysis of the one hundred Guy Blach films that survive, and in the process rewrites early cinema history.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Oddly enough, the life and work of the first woman filmmaker has received little attention. McMahan redresses the oversight by critically and comprehensively analyzing the contributions of Alice Guy Blache (1873-1968). A filmmaker herself and one of the foremost authorities on the subject of early cinema, McMahan examines the themes of the few remaining Guy Blache films, the techniques of her actors, and the evolution of a film "language" in the director's choice of shots. In her quest to uncover her subject through contact with original primary sources, McMahan reveals why research into early cinema can be problematic: it is difficult enough even to locate material, much less ascribe attribution. The author's firsthand "discoveries" also have implications for the conceptualization of early cinema. Meticulously documented, this book tells not only what this film pioneer did but also why her work is important. Anecdotal nuggets make the study compelling for general readers, too. Recommended for film history collections. Jayne Plymale, Univ. of Georgia, Athens
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"...a monumental job of excavation...A major feat of enlightened - and enlightening - scholarship." -- Los Angeles Times

"An obsessively detailed history of a true motion-picture pioneer." -- American Cinematographer

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 408 pages
• Publisher: Continuum (October 20, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826451578
• ISBN-13: 978-0826451576
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,286,062 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Blache Is Not Blase, June 29, 2004

By 

Polkadotty (Mountains of Western North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Alice Guy Blach: Lost Visionary of the Cinema (Paperback)

This hugely expansive book receives five stars for content, thoroughness of research, and plumbing of the depths of extant examples of Miss Guy Blache's memoirs and works ~ but not for reader-friendliness. The tone the author takes is most academic, which is understandable once you know that this ten-years-in-the-making, authorative benchmark biography began as a doctoral dissertation. Alison McMahan covers every square inch of Alice Guy Blache's life and her contributions to silent cinema, plus tosses in some fascinating asides regarding the origins of photography, film, and moving pictures. I found the chapter detailing the early mechanical photographic devises most absorbing, losing myself in such obscurities as the phenakitiscope, zoetrope, and praxinoscope. Miss Guy had the great good fortune to be French, living in France, the birthplace of photography, during the era of the embryonic beginnings of film. She got in on the ground floor, starting her career as secretary to Leon Gaumont, founder of the legendary Gaumont Laboratories, which co-liasoned with the also-famed Lumiere brothers, and held association with Melies. Guy, in her position with Gaumont, was allowed permission to dabble with cameras and film, which, very early on, led to the production of her own films, years before the turn of the 20th century. Guy is assumed, with some few facts to dispute this, to have produced the first fiction film and the first close up within a fiction film. Miss Guy was a prodigious director, churning out hundreds of films in all genres, first in France and then in the US at her Fort Lee Solax Studio. Her husband, Herbert Blache, devised a sound system known as the chronophone which could be rigged to synchronise a sound track with a projected film. Together they made productions to fit with this chronophone, a notoriously unreliable instrument, which more than anything else proved the eventual ruin of them. I recommend this book in conjunction with the biography of Lois Weber: The Director Who Lost Her Way in History. Read both of these books for a wonderful introduction to a sadly passed-over aspect of silent cinema, that of the era of the flourishing woman director, studio owner, and visionary. As such, both books succeed exceedingly.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating, remarkable research, September 6, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Alice Guy Blache: Lost Visionary of the Cinema (Hardcover)

This book is an amazing labor of love. I should admit that before reading it, I knew very little about the book's subject, Alice Guy. The same can clearly not be said of the author, Alison McMahan, who shows an extreme devotion to the work of her subject - not merely in picking through it, analysing it, explaining it, and bringing it to life, but in hunting it down in the first place.

Note that I referred to the author's devotion to the WORK of her subject. This is not a biography - more a loving excavation of the career of an extraordinary woman, with many personal details and anecdotes thrown in for good measure. But in the light of the recent survey I read which showed that only 5% of Hollywood films are directed by women (forgive me if I've got that figure wrong, but it was tiny, anyway), the career of Alice Guy seems utterly remarkable. The fact that this woman achieved so much in such a short space of time, in the very earliest days of the film industry, will truly make you stop and think.

I would willingly have given this book 5 stars, except for two reasons. First, there are a handful of typographical errors - for which I cannot blame the author, but they did irritate me; secondly, (and I'm being selfish here) I wanted to read more - and yet the end of the book is taken up with an enormous list of Alice Guy's films, which I am sure will be of great use to scholars, but left me feeling a tiny bit short-changed. But I'd hate to end on a negative note, so I'll say this: Alison McMahan has written a highly original and inspiring book, and I hope that many more people get to read it.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pioneering Woman director in France and the USA, October 19, 2005

By 

Bruce Calvert "silent movie collector" (Dallas, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Alice Guy Blach: Lost Visionary of the Cinema (Paperback)

Alice Guy Blaché was the first woman who directed a film. She directed hundreds, maybe 2000 films. Of course most were very, very short, since she started about 1896 or 1897. She was also the first woman to run a studio, which she did for Solax in Ft. Lee, New Jersey from 1910-1914.

Blaché also directed many synchronized sound films in 1906 and 1907! They were actually like music videos of today. A singer or dancer would have their performance recorded on a disc (much like the Vitaphone disks twenty years later). Then Guy (pronounced "Giy") would film the performance, while the singer lip-synced their performance, or the dancers tried to keep up with the music. Of course the synchronization was not that great, but these films were screened in France, Germany, and the USA at the time.

After Guy and writer/director Herbert Blaché got married, she temporarily retired from Gaumont (France). But Herbert was not successful making films in the US for Gaumont, so she began working again writing, directing and producing films in New Jersey. By the way, Herbert was much younger than Alice!

After a couple of successful years directing films in Fort Lee, New Jersey, her studio closed. Other authors have always claimed that it was because Herbert Blaché was reckless with money, as well as unfaithful to his wife Alice, but the author can pretty much prove that theory wrong.

Like any book on early cinema, the author has to cover the filmmaker's struggle to figure out film language. It difficult to write about film theory, but luckily the focus of this book is historical. I only saw the word "diegesis" a few times, so don't let that scare you away. The book also explains how the early French filmmakers Méliès, Gaumont, and Pathé, plus the American Edison studio copied each other's films -- either by re-filming them or copying them in the lab -- in the days before copyright laws had any teeth.

Ms. McMahan has done an incredible research job on her subject. The filmography alone is worth the price of the book. It lists all of Ms. Guy's films, and which archive holds the existing films. Unfortunately, many of her films are lost forever.

The book is a little disappointing in that more of her personal life is not covered, especially since Ms. Guy's daughter assisted with the book. However, until her forced retirement, it appears that Ms. Guy's work was her life. This book is highly recommended for the serious silent film fan.