The Memoirs of Alice Guy Blache

The fascinating memoir of influential French filmmaker Alice Guy Blache, one of the industry’s most significant pioneers and a trailblazer for female directors.

Alice Guy Blache (1873-1968) is a unique pioneer of the motion picture, being not only a female filmmaker but also one of the first, if not the first, to make a narrative film. Her career spanned from 1894, when she became secretary to the legendary Leon Gaumont, through 1920, working in both her native France and the United States. In all, she was responsible for approximately 1,000 films, possibly more than any other director or producer.

The Memoirs of Alice Guy Blache was first published in 1976, and to a large extent led to her rediscovery after decades of relative obscurity. Guy Blache writes of her beginnings in the motion picture industry, her direction not only of silent films but also some of the earliest synchronized sound motion pictures, her marriage and journey to the United States, the founding of her own studio in New Jersey, her fame, and the sad journey into obscurity in the 1920s. Her story reveals both the opportunities and the ultimate rejection facing a woman director in the early years of the twentieth century.

These first-hand and original memoirs are enhanced with a complete filmography, an epilogue by her daughter Simone, a brief biography of her director husband, Herbert Blache, a remembrance by feminist actress/writer Madame Olga Petrova, and a sampling of contemporary articles on the director. Through it all, Alice Guy Blache’s personal charm, good humor, and modesty shines.