Alice Guy-Blache (1873-1968) was a French film pioneer and was also the first woman to direct movies. Alice worked for the Gaumont Film Company and from 1896 to 1906 was Gaumont’s Head of Production.
Some sources say she was the only woman in the world directing movies during that period.
Among her films:
THE FAIRY OF THE CABBAGES (1896) – A light-hearted short that ran less than 2 minutes, this movie depicted a costumed woman as the title fairy. The premise was the old folk notion that children were found under cabbages in a cabbage patch. It was a lesser-known variation of the stork tale. The short was remade in 1900 and 1902.
PIERRETTE’S ESCAPADES (1900) – A woman changes from a pink dress to a green dancing outfit. She proceeds to dance alone and soon finds the stock clown character Pierrot dancing with her. The clown tries kissing her but is rebuffed. Next, the stock character Harlequin dances with her, impresses her and the two share a kiss as the 2-minute production comes to a close. Some frames were hand-tinted.
ESMERALDA (1905) – The oldest known movie version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Alice had been shepherding Gaumont’s movies away from mere visual spectacle and on to narrative filmmaking.
This 10-minute production is, like so many silent films, lost to us. Denise Becker starred as the title character and Henry Vorins played Quasimodo. Continue reading
Yes, Happy Easter, ladies and gentlemen! Balladeer’s Blog helps celebrate by combining the holiday with my passion for silent films. I’m providing the following list of silent movies – both shorts and feature films – about Jesus Christ. 
CHRISTUS (1916) – Directed by Giulio Cesare Antamoro, this is a fascinating look at Jesus, from the Angel visiting Mary through his Resurrection and subsequent visit with his Apostles. Christus runs 88 minutes and features some inventive variations on Biblical tableaux. The Star of Bethlehem is depicted as a comet; when Mary finds young Jesus preaching to his teachers His shadow appears as a cross; and Judas gets three visions of the Devil – first urging him on to betray Jesus, then taunting him when he regrets that betrayal, and finally welcoming him into Hell, which opens up under Judas’ swinging corpse. 
MARIE WALCAMP (1894-1936) – Like her fellow silent film icons 
TEMPEST CODY – Marie was already getting above the title billing by the time her two-reel Tempest Cody western shorts came along in 1919. Tempest was a hard-riding, two-fisted, straight-shooting woman of the old west who was always on the side of right. 
FIRE DRILL aka Simulacro de Incendio (1897) – On January 24th of this year, Gabriel Veyre (at left) held the very first exhibition of silent film shorts in Cuban history at a theater in Havana. 
FILM COMMERCIAL FOR LA TROPICAL BEER aka the Missing Sorcerer (1898) – This was the very first film directed by a native Cuban – Jose Esteban Casasús, a noted pioneer of Cuban Cinema. Lasting just under a minute, this short advertised the brewery & product of La Tropical beer and was produced by Cinemataca de Cuba.
CONSTITUTIONAL ASSEMBLY (1901) – A film capturing the 1901 assembly, the equivalent of our Constitutional Convention. Following the defeat of Spain in the Spanish-American War, Cuba produced its first constitution a few years later. That document was openly based on the United States Constitution but had 115 articles instead of America’s 7. 
THE MYSTERY OF DR. FU MANCHU (1923) – One of the earliest, if not THE earliest, big screen adaptations of Sax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu novels, which launched in 1913. The tales depicted the brilliant Chinese figure Dr. Fu Manchu at most plotting global domination but most often uniting many Far Eastern races against White Colonial nations to drive them out of Asia. 
MOTOR PIRATES (1906) American release title The Modern Pirates – This British action short was directed by England’s monumentally underrated silent film director Arthur Melbourne Cooper. Motor Pirates clocks in at under 9 minutes but crams quite a bit into that runtime. 
The Motor Pirates drive their vehicle on to a country estate where they employ its front-end “suction feature” to vacuum up several chickens. Four men of the estate come out with guns blazing to stop the crooks, but they shoot down their victims, leaving three dead and one barely clinging to life as they drive off. 
BESS THE DETECTRESS – Bess Meredyth was a silent film starlet, writer and director. This particular blog post will focus on her Bess the Detectress character at Universal Studios but in the future Balladeer’s Blog will cover other aspects of her life and career. 
BESS THE DETECTRESS IN THE OLD MILL AT MIDNIGHT (Jun 1914) – The first short in the Bess the Detectress series. When the stage show she was performing in closes as a flop, Bess is left scrambling for her next meal. She spots a Wanted poster offering a reward of $200.00 (equal to $6,300 in 2025) for the capture of the male outlaw Honey Hall. 
ASTREA – One of the most enigmatic figures from the Silent Film Era. No precise birth or death dates are known. Her surname was supposedly Barbieri but not even that is certain. 
JUSTITIA (1919) – Astrea’s most well-known movie. She plays a prim, ladylike noblewoman who becomes a fiery, two-fisted champion of justice when need be. 
MABEL NORMAND – Born Amabel Ethelreid Normand on November 9th, 1893 in New York, this silent film comedienne blazed trails for countless subsequent actresses as well as female directors and screenwriters. Like so many silent film stars Normand is largely neglected today except for my fellow silent movie geeks and I. 
INDISCRETION OF BETTY (1910) – Mabel had her first starring role in this short drama but had appeared in an unknown number of previous films in smaller roles. Mabel played Betty, the wife in the marriage of a social-climbing couple. 
HER AWAKENING (1911) – The above-mentioned short in which Mabel caught the eye of Mack Sennett, who then signed her for comedy collaborations. In this short drama, Normand played a young lady trying to snare a successful husband. 
THROUGH HIS WIFE’S PICTURE (1911) – Mabel Normand’s first film short with Mack Sennett. He directed and had a supporting role in this 9-minute comedy about a misunderstanding that threatens a marriage. 
20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA (1916) – The famous first cinematic adaptation of the Jules Verne classic. Having loved the version of this pioneering 1916 film that was available during the 1990s and earlier I had put off watching the restored and upgraded version released in 2010. 
Personally, I would have preferred that Universal had just produced a shorter 20,000 Leagues film that was all Leagues and nothing but Leagues, then release The Mysterious Island later as a sequel. In 1916 audience expectations were not yet such that movies had to run the 86 to 105 minutes boasted by surviving copies of 20,000 Leagues. 
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