Spectacles - Alice Guy, Mademoiselle cinéma: a play about the invention of cinema by a visionary woman

By Cookie, 24 september 2024

The curtain rises in 1922 in New York, and a couple appears: Alice Guy and her husband Herbert Blaché. She blames him for ruining her and selling her film studio, Solax Film, at a low price to settle their debts. She decided to return to France on her own, no longer wishing to stay in the United States, and wanted to continue to pursue her passion for cinema, making films in her own way.

The date 1896 appears on the screen, and this flashback takes us back in time. Alice tells us about her childhood, her love of books, which she inherited from her father, and her search for work after his death to help her mother. With no special training, she managed to start out as a stenographer, and thanks to Gustave Eiffel's support, was introduced to Mr. Gaumont, who took her under his wing, showing her the tricks of the trade, the new inventions associated with photography, and the beginnings of moving images. Alice was a good student, not afraid of hard work, and over time she became both a tireless assistant to him and the director of a film studio. He trusted her, despite the fact that she was a woman in a man's profession.

Each new scene is accompanied by photos, newspaper clippings and excerpts from Alice Guy's early films, including the “famous cabbage fairy” who laughingly lifts up babies born in cabbages. These date references enable us to follow her career chronologically, to understand her work and the inventions of the time, from new cameras to the possibility of screening films in public.

The set for this play is simple: just a table, two chairs, a projector on a stand and a screen in the background. The presence of the actors is enough to convey the emotion and understanding of the story. There are three actors on stage, Alice Guy, Mr. Gaumont and an actor who plays several characters, Alice's husband, Gustave Eiffel, an employee. What bothered me about this actor was that, apart from a hat, his appearance doesn't change much, so you can be confused by the role he's playing. On the other hand, as far as Alice Guy's character is concerned, the successive periods correspond well with the changes in dress.

In 1h 15, the staging is effective, with its many flashbacks, dates in the background accompanied by images and press releases, the author takes us back in time, making us discover Alice Guy's passion, her path, her thirst for freedom, her feminist fight to have her profession recognized, her vision of future cinema will give her reason, always bearing in mind that the actors in her films had to remain natural. Forgotten, it was time, necessary and indispensable to bring her back to life through this play.

Synopsis:
In 1896, Alice Guy was the first to come up with the idea of making a fictional film, at a time when everyone still saw the Lumière brothers' cinematographic projections as nothing more than a technical feat. Without realizing it, she had just invented cinema. From Paris to New York, via Hollywood, she made over 1,000 films. In the company of Georges Méliès, Louis Lumière, Léon Gaumont, Gustave Eiffel and others, Alice Guy became the first woman director in the world. Alice Guy, the world's first female director, gradually reveals the captivating story of her dizzying life...

Alice Guy, Mademoiselle cinéma
Author : Caroline Rainette
Artists : Caroline Rainette, Lennie Coindeaux, Jérémie Hamon
Director : Lennie Coindeaux; Caroline Rainette
Running time: 75 minutes
Location: Le Funambule Montmartre 53 rue des saules, 75018 Paris