When we look at the last 20, 30, 40 years of Hollywood history and the film industry in general, we see the increasing role of women emerging in management and director positions, not primarily actresses. However, such a situation is not new to cinematography, because women have already held such high positions, but it has already been forgotten. This continued until the 1920s and 1930s when the film was more of an art than a business. Unfortunately, the change in the way Hollywood works and the way we think about women at that time has led to the fact that many of them, such as Alice Guy-Blaché, have disappeared from the industry. But what exactly happened then?
Although women directors appeared in the history of cinematography at an early stage, their work remains almost unknown today. You can mention here a number of names of women whose activities were later forgotten: "Alice Guy from France, Esfir Szub from the Soviet Union, Maya Deren and Lois Weber from the USA, Leontine Sagan and Leni Riefenstahl from Germany, Nina Niovilla and Franciszka Themerson from Poland." According to the author quoted here, the contemporary female directors operated on the fringes of the avant-garde film, and above all, outside its system that was being developed in the 1930s.
What's more, later they began to be disapproved of in such high positions as director or producer. This is how Anna Nacher says about it: "in the 1930s - after a series of upheavals and transformations that led to the crystallization of a system with huge studies (...) and a huge budget - women began to disappear from sight where it was about taking decision. One of the few exceptions here was, for example, Dorothy Arzner, who was the only American director in the 1930s and 1940s.
Paige Brunsen expresses it a little more forcefully when she says that "since the momentum for big business was noticed in cinematography, women have been pushed into the shadows, with negative long-term consequences." How does he argue this? According to this author, until the 1920s, the film was treated more as a form of independent art, while the entire system related to cinematography was yet to be created. At that time, the idea was to create this art, not the opportunities to earn from it. And at that time, the role of many women was really important. Anyway, we can give the floor to the editor of the Motion Picture Supplement, who wrote in 1915 about the role of women in the film at that time:
"None of the actions undertaken by women are as impressive as those within the film industry, which in its early stages created a new and powerful art in which the fair sex is so much an active factor that no single occupation can be identified, either on the side of art and an industry in which women would not be visibly involved. In cinemas, studios and even on the stock exchange, where films are sold and distributed, gender equality is implemented like in no other profession for which women fought for the right to practice at the beginning of the 20th century ”(Ostrowska, p. 164).
Paige Brunsen also notes, following fellow author Ally Acker, that "more women held prominent behind-the-scenes positions prior to 1925 than at any other time in the next 50 years." As proof of this, Alicia Malone gives a statistic: Between 1912 and 1919, Universal employed 7 female directors who made 170 films in total. By contrast, from the mid-1920s until 1982, Universal recruited no woman for the position (Malone, 21). Anthony Slide, in his 1977 book, wrote in a similar vein that "there were more female directors in the American film industry by 1920 than in any later period in history" (Ostrowska, p. 164).
With the advent of the era of sound movies, women had to face what has been referred to as the Hollywood Studio System. Hollywood cinematography has become increasingly centralized. Control over this growing business was practically taken over by a few of the largest labels, with which independent producers simply did not stand a chance. This explains the disappearance of the producers from the scene. But why couldn't women breakthrough in major film studios?
This, in turn, was related to the understanding of the roles proper to men and women at the time. According to Alicia Malone, women were not seen as sufficiently business-oriented at the time, which meant that the positions they occupied were gradually passed on to men. And how were men and women perceived differently then, and most importantly, how were film studios of the time perceived? First of all, women were thought of as future mothers, which meant that they were even treated as temporary workers. This was especially true of married women. This also translated into the number of earnings, as it was believed that men should be paid more as it was expected that they would become the sole breadwinners of the family.
Paige Brunsen mentions a significant change in this context: from producers and directors, women have been reduced to the roles of studio girls. Paige Brunsen even lists the roles in which women could then be employed in the film industry, including actresses, assistants to artistic directors, designers, dance instructors, pianists, scriptwriters, and hairdressers. The artistic management, costume design, hairdressing, and make-up departments began to be referred to as "the pink ghettos."
Interestingly, and what is also emphasized by Paige Brunsen, compared to the years 1911-1920 in the years 1921-1930, more screenwriters were employed in the film industry, women were not ousted from this role. In the years 1911-1920, women were mentioned in this capacity in the case of 1,077 films, which then constituted slightly more than 20%, while in the years 1921-1930 there were already 1,489 such films, i.e. almost 25%. The author states that the reason for this is that the work of the screenwriters was treated more like the work "behind the scenes" of the film. On the other hand, as Anna Nacher remembers in "Moving Picture Magazine" in an article entitled The new profession of women included the following thesis: "women - as more skilled in the art of writing (eg letters) are ideal authors of film scripts" (Nacher, p. 73).
It is impossible to write about the role of women in the early days of the film industry without mentioning the character of Alice Guy-Blaché. This future director and producer, born in 1875 in Paris, was to turn out to be a pioneer on many levels. Elżbieta Ostrowska recalls that her father, who was a bookseller, instilled in her a passion for art and literature. In her youth, she attended stenotype courses. When her father died, she managed to find a job at Léon Gaumont's company, which was producing photographic equipment at the time. It was there in 1895 that Louis Lumière presented his cinematograph. Alice was fascinated by this invention and asked Gaumont for permission to make a short film with it.
This is how it was based on the French fairy tale of the wizard La fee aux choux, which was presented in 1896 at the International Exhibition in Paris. This gives Alice Guy an unquestionable priority in the context of female directors, and, according to some authors, even directors in general. In 1906, she made an important film: La Passion ou la Vie de Notre Seigneur Jesus-Christ, which is often mistakenly attributed to Victorin Jasset (Ostrowska, p. 168). At the end of her activity in France, she experimented with various technical innovations, for example, she tried to use a chromophore that made it possible to record sound.
In 1906 she met her future husband, Herbert Blaché, with whom she left for the USA in 1907. There, at first, Alice only looked after their daughter Simone, but in 1910 she founded The Solax Company with her own funds. The company produced about 325 films in the years 1910-1914. Alice herself has completed about 35 of them. In total, she made about 300 films, including even one of the science-fiction genre: In the Year 2000 from 1912. The only sad fact is that the vast majority of films made by her in Solax itself have not survived to our times.
Unfortunately, Alice Guy-Blaché was one of those women who fell victim to the emerging Hollywood "system". Unable to continue her activity in the USA, in 1922 she returned to France for a few years, but she also failed to continue there. In 1927, she returned to the United States, but only engaged in educational activities. It is also worth mentioning that she was the first director to be honored with the Order of the Legion of Honor. Check also the articles about women in world history collected here.
Lois Weber's film output is extremely rich. Her name as an actress, producer, director, or screenwriter can be found in around 400 films. Before she started filming, she was a pianist, and at the end of the 19th century, she was also active in evangelization. In 1905, she began her acting career, joining a traveling theater company. She also married the manager of this group, Phillips Smalley. For two years she only looked after the house, and in 1908 she was employed by the Gaumont Film Studio.
Originally, Lois Weber treated the film as a tool of evangelization, but often in her films, she raised controversial topics. She touched upon issues of prejudice and racial prejudice, but also issues related to divorce and even birth control, including abortion. Her films were often censored or their distribution made difficult. In her 1914 film - Hypocrites - the main character appears naked in one of the scenes. According to some sources, it was even Lois Weber herself, because she could not find an actress who would like to play in this scene. Consequence: Ohio banned the distribution of the film, and the mayor of New York ordered that clothing be painted over each cage. On the other hand, when in Where are my children? in 1916 raised the issue of birth control, while condemning abortion, the film was denied distribution rights by the Philadelphia Censorship Office. It was only additional publicity for the film: it grossed Universal almost $ 3 million.
Lois Weber worked for Universal from 1916, and in 1917 decided to start Lois Weber Production. Success after success. Suffice it to say, when Paramount hired her in 1920, she was offered $ 55,000 for each film and half the profits of the production. She was foretold of a bright future in the age of sounds. However, the expectations of the audience, which increasingly wanted simple entertainment, have changed, so Weber's films no longer find fertile ground. She tried to return to the industry several times, but to no avail, and for example, her "racist-focused film White Heat (1934) was considered anachronistic and completely devoid of humor" (Ostrowska, p. 176).
Bibliography:
- P. Brunsen, Female Filmmakers in the 1920s, https://digitalcommons.colum.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=libraryresearch, accessed 09/23/2021.
- A. Malone, Backwards & In Heels: The Past, Present, and Future of Women Working in Film, Mango Publishing Group, Coral Gables 2018.
- A. Nacher, Jodie Foster - negotiator on the other side of the camera (in :) M. Radkiewicz (ed.), Cinema Directors. Tradition and the Present, Rabid, Krakow 2005.
- E. Ostrowska, A Woman's Voice in Silent Cinema (in :) M. Radkiewicz (ed.), Cinema Directors. Tradition and the Present, Rabid, Krakow 2005.
- E. Wejbert-Wąsiewicz, Women's films. Changes turn and the "glass ceiling" in Polish cinematography before and after 1989, "Sztuka and Dokumentacja", No. 13/2015.
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