Film Fatale: Alice Guy-Blaché Made The First Narrative Film

Who invited the movie camera? Who made the first film? Thomas Edison had something to do with it, Louis Le Prince… the Lumière brothers maybe. The invention of the device is one thing, but then who made the first film? And what constitutes a film? Filming passers by for the first time in history is of course revolutionary, but it’s not really a film. It has to be a narrative story then, the first time humans began to piece together the elements that would result in what we have today in all its horrors and glory.

Alice Guy-Blaché was a name I’d never heard before 2018, and I was extremely confused as to why that was. I’d never delved into the history of how film began before that really, but still, there were so many times, so many documentaries, where the subject would come up and the screen would be filled by the Lumière brothers and Méliès. No mention of Blaché, who started a film production company in 1910; The company was called Solax and it was the biggest pre-Hollywood production company in existence. It shouldn’t be so surprising, but it is with the never ending conversation of the bleak amount of women filmmakers nominated for awards. (Although these award ceremonies shouldn't hold as much importance as they do.)

Blaché's first film was called The Cabbage Fairy (1896) or La Fée aux Choux. Although less than a minute, and the original being lost, it’s considered possibly the first ‘narrative’ film ever made. It features costume, character, and takes the form of a traditional means of storytelling. Blanche was inspired to create this after watching Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory in 1985, seeing the endless potential for this medium as it was literally just created. She was 22 and a secretary at this time, and I remember feeling sick when I found out Orson Wells directed Citizen Kane at 25 years old, but it had been outdone already by Blanche laying down the foundations of an entire artform in her early twenties.

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From here Blaché made film after film, spanning from slapstick comedy to documentary, to painting the film frames to utilising double exposure and even giving synchronised sound a go, each movie completely new and full of innovation. This scenario can be hard to imagine, not because a woman couldn't do all of this but trying to understand how this was possible under the scrutiny and control of a band of men running society, culture and the government.

But the film industry did not exist, so there was no one to say yes or no. It was just cameras and those who had access to them. There was a surprising amount of women involved in filmmaking in the early years, but only a few names actually made it through history: It seemed like the general consensus was that Blaché’s work wasn’t ‘interesting’ enough to be noted down, which seems ridiculous considering that without her the trajectory of how cinema came to be may have been very different. 

That being said, Blaché was mentioned by filmmakers Alfred Hitchcock and Sergei Eisenstein, and her influence is clearly seen throughout the early cinema pioneers. 

Madame Has Her Cravings (1906) is a 4 minute film following a pregnant woman indulging in, you guessed it, her pregnancy cravings - she steals food and drink which is then followed by a talking head shot of her consuming. These scenes give me a Daisies (1966) feel, seeing a woman eat and do what she wants on screen seems like something that is lacking when the camera is in the hands of a man. The use of women in comedy so early on is so surprising too - it’s hard to imagine that we could have had a female Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton if things continued in Blaché’s direction. 

Placed in her film studio was a sign for the actors, ‘Be Natural’, another before-her-time idea of making film its own entity rather than a replication of the stage. Blaché was head of her studio at 33, but unfortunately she wouldn't be seen as someone with great importance for decades to come. Blaché moved back to France from America in 1922 and no one would give her a job because now the studio system was formed and there was no room for an older woman. It seemed that her efforts didn't matter, or were just forgotten. 

“There is nothing connected with the staging of a motion picture that a woman cannot do as easily as a man, and there is no reason why she cannot completely master every technicality of the art.”

With creating over a thousand films in 26 years, it almost hurts to imagine how it must have felt for an industry that you helped create turn it back on you. The production company she founded, Gaumont, even left her out of the company's history. Although many of her films are lost, it’s exhilarating to look back at the timeline of her life and see that cinema, a form that has seemingly been dominated by men in Hollywood, had its beginnings through the vision of a woman.  As Blaché famously said:  “There is nothing connected with the staging of a motion picture that a woman cannot do as easily as a man, and there is no reason why she cannot completely master every technicality of the art.”

Words: Charlotte Amy Landrum