of her career while also being a wife and a mother. Her comedies are particularly impressive, with inventive ideas neatly packaged into short-form satire, like very early sketch comedy. Guy also filmed dance sequences, dramas, and even a religious epic called The Life of Christ in 1906. This was one of the most ambitious productions in cinema at the time, involving a staggering 300 extras.
With all her experimentation, Alice Guy helped to form the basis of film grammar and structure. She encouraged her actors toward a more modern style, asking them to “be natural” instead of posing and posturing to the camera.
In 1912, using her married name of Alice Guy-Blaché, she made another comedy where the gender roles were reversed. In the Year 2000 feels like a remake of The Consequences of Feminism, with the difference that this time it is the women who win in the end. On its release in 1912, the magazine Moving Picture World wrote about In the Year 2000, saying:
“A great number of prognostications often terrify us with visions [of] what will be when women shall rule the earth and the time when men shall be subordinates and adjuncts. It is rather a fine question to decide—for chivalrous men, anyway. Today with the multiplicity of feminine activities and the constant broadening of feminine spheres, it’s difficult to predict what heights women will achieve… Women in this film are supreme, and man’s destiny is presided over by woman. No attempt is made at burlesque—but the very seriousness of the purpose makes the situations ludicrous.”
Alice Guy-Blaché was awarded the Legion of Honor in 1953 and died in 1968 at the age of ninety-four. Around 130 of her 1,000 films remain, with much work being done to restore and preserve her important place in history.
Alice Guy uses the device of gender role reversal to make her audience think about how women are treated in the real world and how ludicrous it is to believe that women would act exactly like men if they were given more power.
★Alice Guy played a vital role in the development of cinema
and worked in both France and the US during the birth of the film industry.
★Guy married fellow Gaumont Studios employee Herbert Blaché in 1907. Shortly after their wedding, the two moved to the US, where Guy set up Solax Studios.
★After her divorce, Guy returned to France in the 1920s, but she found it impossible to get work as a film director.
★In the early 1900s, film wasn’t thought to be an important art form. Many silent films were destroyed and accurate archives weren’t kept. The achievements of early filmmakers such as Alice Guy remained largely hidden until the work of film historians such as Anthony Slide. He wrote about Guy in his book Early Women Directors, published in 1977, and edited The Memoirs of Alice Guy-Blaché in 1986.
Holly Weaver on La Souriante Madame Beudet (1922)
Six years prior to the release of her riot-inducing surrealist film La Coquille et le Clergyman, Germaine Dulac was exercising her female gaze in what would later become a feminist classic: La Souriante Madame Beudet. The film’s eponymous hero (Germaine Dermoz) is an intelligent woman who, when she’s not seeking solace in books or playing piano, sits at the receiving end of the selfishness and “suicide jokes” of her buffoonish husband (Alexandre Arquillière), whom she despises.
Although at first her subtle expressions portray a sense of apathy toward him, her thoughts and dreams tell us otherwise. Through the use of close-ups, mental images, and superimposition, Dulac allows us to delve into the psyche of her protagonist as she fantasizes about other men and being rid of her husband. However, as her feeling of imprisonment intensifies, these fantasies turn into nightmares since she cannot shake the image of Monsieur Beudet appearing around every corner, trapping her in an endless cycle of torment.
The motif of the “façade” is central to the film: the opening exterior shots of the tranquil village are betrayed by the gradual discovery of what is occurring behind closed doors, just as Madame Beudet’s “smiling” façade is belied by insight into her mind. Dulac’s commitment to the dichotomy between interiority and exteriority is further enforced through her use of light and shadow, creating a perpetual chiaroscuro. Nowhere is this contrast more striking than on the face of Madame Beudet herself, particularly while she sits at the window staring out with a deep tristesse, the presence of light and dark expressing both her fear of leaving and her reluctance to stay. Dermoz’s ability to covertly portray Madame Beudet’s inner torment is astonishing—whether it’s a look of disgust as she watches her husband sloppily eating dinner or a look of bitter hatred as the sheer mental image of him breaks her blissful reverie. Although Madame Beudet’s gestures become more erratic as she reaches a breaking point, her facial expressions retain a sense of impenetrability, unlike those of her husband, whose wide eyes and wicked grin give him the appearance of a maniacal clown from start to finish.
The film’s climax sees Monsieur Beudet playing his “suicide joke” once more by holding a revolver, which Madame has preemptively loaded, to his head. However, this time he turns it on her and fires a shot—but misses, and immediately runs over to comfort her. Thinking she intended to kill herself and not him, he begins smothering her with affection and ponders aloud, “How would I have lived without you?” Monsieur Beudet’s false assumption about Madame’s mentality shows the importance of the female gaze in film: a woman-led exploration of a woman’s psyche can provide an intimate portrayal of how the struggles we face run much deeper than what appears on the surface, as Dulac demonstrates so perfectly in her masterpiece.
Holly Weaver is a fourth-year BA French and Spanish student at the University of Leeds. After graduation, she hopes to earn a master’s degree in film studies.
Dance, Girl, Dance
RKO Radio Pictures, 1940, USA | Black & White, 90 minutes, Drama
A complex female friendship/rivalry between two dancers
of opposite styles.
Director: Dorothy Arzner
Producer: Erich Pommer
Cinematography: Russell Metty
Screenplay: Tess Slesinger, Frank Davis, based on a story by Vicki Baum
Starring: Maureen O’Hara (“Judy O’Brien”), Louis Hayward (“Jimmy Harris”), Lucille Ball (“Bubbles”), Ralph Bellamy (“Steve Adams”), Virginia Field (“Elinor Harris”)
“I was averse to having any comment made about being a woman director…because I wanted to stand up as a director and not have people make allowances that it was a woman.”
—Dorothy Arzner
There’s a moment in Dance, Girl, Dance which may elicit spontaneous applause. The scene comes toward the end of the movie and features a scathing speech about the objectification of women for entertainment purposes. And this impassioned speech may also make the audience think about how they too have unfairly judged these characters.
Dance, Girl, Dance follows a female dance troupe trying to make a living. At the center of the group is Judy O’Brien (Maureen O’Hara), a shy brunette who hopes to elevate
