He is the first director to make fiction in cinema. He made the first fiction film in cinema history, La Fée aux Choux, The Cabbage Fairy, in 1896. As a director and producer, he has produced over three hundred and fifty films according to official sources and over a thousand according to unofficial sources in various genres from fantasy films to romantic films. Until 1906, she is the only known woman director in the world.
He was born in Paris in 1873. He was the youngest of four children of a Parisian bookstore. In 1896 he started working as a secretary at camera manufacturer Gaumont. When the company switched from producing cameras to film production, Alice Guy-Blaché was one of its first directors. Guy-Blaché, who was a producer of Gaurmont films between 1897-1906, made nearly a hundred films during this period, including La Fée aux Choux 1896 Lumière’s Arroseur Arrosé 1897 La Vie du Christ 1906. His first film La Fée aux Choux Cabbage Fairy, shot in 1896 and not even 1 minute, is also the first fictional film in the history of cinema.
In 1906 he met and married the cameraman Herbert Blaché. Between 1906-1907, he had around 100 short films with sound, made with a chronophone. He founded his own production company Solax in 1910 in New York, where he went to because of his wife’s appointment, but the company, where he made many creative films for three years, went bankrupt due to crises. He founded Blaché Features in 1913.
The artist, who left her husband in 1922 and returned to France with her daughter, could not find the opportunity to make a film again. He started writing children’s books.
He was honored by the French government with the Legion d’Honneur (Order of Honor) in 1953. He returned to the USA from 1964 and lived with his daughter. He died in a nursing home in New Jersey in 1968.
“Short filmography”
- La Fée aux Choux (1896)
- La Esmeralda (1905)
- A Fool and His Money (1912)
- Algie the Miner (1912)
- Algie Making an American Citizen (1912)
- A House Divided (1913)
- The Pit and the Pendulum (1913)
- Shadows of the Moulin Rouge (1913)
- Matrimony’s Speed Limit (1913)
- The Woman of Mystery (1914)
- My Madonna (1915)
- House of Cards (1917)
- The Great Adventure (1918)
- Vampire (1920)
Alice Guy-Blache was a WOMAN. Read your write-up! Throughout you refer to “HE” so many
times. Correct this blatant mistake.
Alice Guy-Blache was a WOMAN. Read your write-up! Throughout you refer to “HE” so many
times. Correct this blatant mistake.