Alice Guy was one of the first and pioneering filmmakers, working in France and the U.S.A. at the beginning of cinema. Her contributions seemed to have been forgotten but she finally being recognised, with a retrospective at the Deauville Film Festival, a role in the Paris 2024 opening ceremony and an upcoming TV series devoted to her life and career.
Guy was employed as a secretary by cinema pioneers the Gaumont brothers in 1894. Just two years later she persuaded them to let her make a 1-minute short, "The Cabbage-Patch Fairy", which is considered the first narrative film. This is a 1900 remake because the original film, along with many more of Guy's works, is lost:
Guy soon became head of production at Gaumont. She made over 200 films in ten years, experimenting with hand-coloured films and ones with a primitive form of synchronised sound.
In 1907, she married cameraman Hubert Blaché and the couple moved to the United States. By 1910, Guy had started her own production company, Solax, in New Jersey. At that point the movie industry was based on the East coast, before the move to Hollywood. Solax was a success and Guy one of the leading filmmakers. But after 1920, she never made another film. Whether her husband's bad investments or sexism in the industry were to blame, she moved back to France with her children and her story was forgotten.
She was awarded France's Legion of Honour in 1953, not long before her death in 1968. But interest grew in her story and in 2024 she was one of the ten pioneering women honoured with golden statues during the Paris Olympic opening ceremony.
This year's Deauville Film Festival is showing a retrospective of six of her American productions. Her career on both sides of the Atlantic fit perfectly into the festival's ethos.
And a TV series about Alice Guy's life is currently filming. The HBO-France Télévisions production stars Bérénice Bejo as the filmmaker. It should be on our screens in 2026.
Find out more about Alice Guy in this short video:
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