Alice Guy-Blaché
Oct. 1st, 2018 09:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerPink-Slipped has had one good effect, which is that I have spent the day (it’s been slow here at the library) searching out silent films by female directors that have ended up on Youtube.
This is somewhat nitpicky work: it can be hard to pin down, for instance, exactly how long a movie is supposed to be. But I ended up with a rich haul, and I intend to share it with you as I have the opportunity to watch the films.
Today we have Alice Guy-Blaché, who became the world’s first female director - in fact, one of the first directors in the world full stop - when she began directing short films in France for Gaumont in 1896. Another aspect of that nitpickiness: do you hyphenate the name? Refer to her as Guy or Guy-Blaché or just Blaché?
Quebecois director Marquise Lepage refers to Alice as “Guy” (pronounced Ghee, with a hard G) in her documentary about Guy-Blaché’s life, which is available on Youtube: The Lost Garden. It has a bit of a home-movie feeling to it - it's not a slick production, and some of the voiceovers are stilted - but it's full of interesting information. Lepage interviewed Guy’s daughter and granddaughter and also a number of film scholars, who gamely allowed themselves to be dressed up as characters from Guy’s films, which is kind of adorable. I also enjoyed the clips from Guy’s films, which showcase a wider variety of her work than you can see on Youtube.
But Youtube does have a few films: La Statue, a five-minute short from 1905 about a statue that starts moving and two men who seem to be clowns? why are there random clowns? just go with it, as well as The Consequences of Feminism, a six-minute short from 1906 which posits a future in which men and women have switched places. You can tell, because the women are smoking cigars and men can’t go outside without being accosted by a lustful female. But staying indoors doesn’t help either! Then they just come inside to importune you for your sexual favors!
I suspect that men in the audience missed the pointedness of this short.
And then there’s her twelve-minute short Falling Leaves, which has an accompanying piano score written by a guy who specializes in scores for silent films, whose Youtube page I have bookmarked for future exploration. In “Falling Leaves,” a doctor tells a family that the older daughter of the house will die “by the time all the leaves have fallen”... which prompts the little daughter to tie the leaves back to the trees.
This is a little sappy to modern tastes. What particularly caught my attention here is the fact that the little girl (this is in 1912) is essentially dressed like a flapper: simple dropped waist dress, short hair. The flappers were wearing a grown-up version of the clothes they wore as little girls.
This is somewhat nitpicky work: it can be hard to pin down, for instance, exactly how long a movie is supposed to be. But I ended up with a rich haul, and I intend to share it with you as I have the opportunity to watch the films.
Today we have Alice Guy-Blaché, who became the world’s first female director - in fact, one of the first directors in the world full stop - when she began directing short films in France for Gaumont in 1896. Another aspect of that nitpickiness: do you hyphenate the name? Refer to her as Guy or Guy-Blaché or just Blaché?
Quebecois director Marquise Lepage refers to Alice as “Guy” (pronounced Ghee, with a hard G) in her documentary about Guy-Blaché’s life, which is available on Youtube: The Lost Garden. It has a bit of a home-movie feeling to it - it's not a slick production, and some of the voiceovers are stilted - but it's full of interesting information. Lepage interviewed Guy’s daughter and granddaughter and also a number of film scholars, who gamely allowed themselves to be dressed up as characters from Guy’s films, which is kind of adorable. I also enjoyed the clips from Guy’s films, which showcase a wider variety of her work than you can see on Youtube.
But Youtube does have a few films: La Statue, a five-minute short from 1905 about a statue that starts moving and two men who seem to be clowns? why are there random clowns? just go with it, as well as The Consequences of Feminism, a six-minute short from 1906 which posits a future in which men and women have switched places. You can tell, because the women are smoking cigars and men can’t go outside without being accosted by a lustful female. But staying indoors doesn’t help either! Then they just come inside to importune you for your sexual favors!
I suspect that men in the audience missed the pointedness of this short.
And then there’s her twelve-minute short Falling Leaves, which has an accompanying piano score written by a guy who specializes in scores for silent films, whose Youtube page I have bookmarked for future exploration. In “Falling Leaves,” a doctor tells a family that the older daughter of the house will die “by the time all the leaves have fallen”... which prompts the little daughter to tie the leaves back to the trees.
This is a little sappy to modern tastes. What particularly caught my attention here is the fact that the little girl (this is in 1912) is essentially dressed like a flapper: simple dropped waist dress, short hair. The flappers were wearing a grown-up version of the clothes they wore as little girls.
