This Day in History: 1873-07-01

Alice Guy-Blache, the first cinema director, is born in France on this day in 1873.  She started as secretary to  Léon Gaumont, owner of a photographic and then major motion picture company. When the Lumier Brothers  demonstration a system for projected cinema in Paris, on March 22, 1895, Blache pitched a short story to Gaumont — the Cabbage Fairy. It was completed in April 1896, just a month before the film usually considered the first narrative — George Méliès L’Arroseur arrosé.  After the success of the Cabbage Fairy,  Blache worked on hundreds of short and feature films for Gaumont and in 1907, established a Gaumont film studio in New York. In 1910, she went on to create her own Solax studio in New York with her husband, Herbert Blache. She directed her last film in 1920, and Solax collapsed in bankruptcy in 1922.  She lived in obscurity for the next 46 years and died in 1968 in New Jersey. Overall, she directed over 1,000 films, about 350 of which survive today.   Guy-Blache was  neglected by film historians for many decades, and her lead role in pioneering film narrative has only recently been recognized and appreciated.