In these days of stratospheric production budgets, over-the-top FX, towering egos, and pervasive industry cynicism, how amazing it is to journey back 100 years to the rickety, naive beginnings of moviedom. The Lost Garden provides a superb passport to the fin de siecle cinematic days in which film grammar was being developed on the fly and enchantment with the process of movie making was almost palpable. While the pantheon of early cinema is filled with familiar names--Pathé, Lumière, Porter, Griffith--one notable name has been almost completely obscured over the course of the century--Alice Guy-Blaché. Born in France in 1873 to a respectably bourgeois family, Guy-Blaché got in on the ground floor of movie history working for Lon Gaumont, an engineer-inventor who took the plunge into the newfangled medium in the 1890's. Working her way up from Gaumont's stenographer, Guy-Blaché went on to become the first woman film director (at one time the world's most highly-paid woman), a talented writer and producer, and founder of the largest U.S. movie studio of her day (Solax Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey). Over the course of her prolific working life, Alice had her hand in the production or direction of over 700 enormously popular films in France and the U.S. In the process, her innovations--from experiments with synchronous sound to naturalistic acting style--helped shape modern film aesthetics and techniques. Fewer than fifty of her films survive today. The Lost Garden is a fitting and wonderfully realized homage and rescue from obscurity, lovingly narrated by Alice's granddaughter, which includes tributes from family and film scholars, clips from her surviving films, and fascinating excerpts from TV interviews with the fimmaker. Highly recommended for any library interested in movie history or in women's studies. (Four of Guy-Blaché's more notable films can be seen in the superb The Origins of Film Collection [VL-7/95]). Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (G. Handman)
The Lost Garden: The Life and Cinema of Alice Guy-Blaché
(1995) 53 min. Public libraries: $99.95; colleges & universities: $295. Women Make Movies. PPR. Vol. 12, Issue 4
The Lost Garden: The Life and Cinema of Alice Guy-Blaché
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