To say that Guy’s life affected film would be like saying Henry Ford had something to do with cars. Alice Guy (pronounced “Gee”) started movies as we know them today. Certainly there have been great innovators along the way improving film, but Guy got the whole ball of wax rolling.
Guy was working as a secretary at the Gaumont Company in France who along with other contemporaries such as the Pathe’ brothers, and Louis Lumiere made motion picture cameras. Guy managed to convince Gaumont to give her a crack at filmmaking so he would have a product to entice people to buy his cameras and in short order she was promoted to the head of the filmmaking division of that company. And here is the remarkable thing, Guy not only directed the first narrative motion picture, but was the first to use close ups, (something usually attributed to D.W. Griffin), she was the first to film a motion picture in color. First is a word that remains synonymous with Alice Guy. She did the first film noir, the first gay themed film, she was the first to step out from behind the camera to direct actors, at the time all directors handled the camera themselves, and she made extensive use of wax cylinders to give many of her short films a sound track, in other words they were talkies before anyone had coined that term.
Moving to America, Guy ran the largest pre-Hollywood studio in the country. Over her lifetime Guy wrote and directed over three hundred films and yet this Grand Lady of cinema has been all but ignored. It is time that this wrong is righted and Alice Guy given her due as the pioneer among pioneers in film.
My thanks to Barbra Streisand and AMC for bringing the deeds of Alice Guy and other women of cinema to light. For more information on Alice Guy a search on the Internet will turn up several pages of information about this remarkable woman.
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