Minneapolis Star-Tribune: Alice Guy Blache and Lois Weber
Bruce Calvert
History, regained: Walker series rediscovers women's role in early cinema
Eric Hanson, Star Tribune
Published Mar. 2, 2003 MOV02
In the summer of 2000, an engineer in California made one of the great
discoveries in the history of "lost" cinema. At a flea market north of
Bakersfield, David Navone bought a trunk containing six reels of
innocuous-looking, anonymous old films.
The condition of the films, which weren't even stored in cans and had shrunk
from their original 35-millimeter size, was, in his words, "absolutely
terrible." But one reel contained a little-known but historically important 1912
film, "A Fool and His Money," directed by French film pioneer Alice Guy Blaché.
The first known narrative film to feature an entirely black cast, it had been
considered lost.
Blaché's "A Fool and His Money" will be screened Friday at Walker Art Center
along with two movies by Lois Weber, one of the most highly paid directors of
the 1920s. The screenings are part of the 10th edition of Walker's Women With
Vision film festival.
Dan Streible, a professor at the University of South Carolina and a member of
the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, said the discovery of "A Fool and His
Money" is another step toward writing women back into an early film history from
which they've been largely erased.
"We assume that there weren't many women filmmakers until very recently," he
said. "But in fact, in the silent era there was a significant number of them.
It's only with the [economic] retrenchment that the Depression caused, and
changes with the coming of sound, that there weren't as many women filmmakers --
at least not directing -- than there were in the boom years."
As Hollywood studios consolidated, "fewer people were getting to carve up the
film market," he said. "Whereas in the mid-silent period there were a lot of
competing interests -- both independent and majors like Universal, which is
where Lois Weber worked. She had her own production company but also was a
contract director for Universal."
Vanishing history
Film history is strewn with the names of silent-era stars who didn't adapt to
"talkies." But Streible said the obscurity of two directorial pioneers of the
stature of Weber and Blaché -- many credit the latter with making the earliest
narrative film, in 1896 -- raises a fundamental question that resists a
definitive answer:
Why did women filmmakers get written out of history for a generation?
Hollywood's institutional sexism notwithstanding, a prime reason is the simple,
brutal toll of time. Before the 1950s, films were usually shot on nitrate-based
film stock, which is chemically unstable after about 50 years. As many as 90
percent of all silent films no longer exist.
"Therefore, when we discover something new from this period -- like 'A Fool and
His Money' -- that's a major thing," Streible said. "There is now a stronger
collective action on the part of international archives. The real
getting-it-done cooperative film preservation now is being done better than it
ever has been done before. The opening up of the Eastern Bloc has led to lots of
new discoveries. A new Greta Garbo print, which was mostly intact, was recently
discovered in a vault in basically what was part of the Kremlin."
Also, he said, "there are a lot of private collectors -- fetishists who have
collector's mentalities," who buy reels of film not knowing what they may
uncover.
One such collector is Navone, who, when he looked at the first reel of the six
he'd purchased at that Bakersfield flea market, found something "in absolutely
terrible condition with much of the film melted into globs."
Viewing the films with contemporary projectors risked destroying them, he said.
He sent inquiries on the Internet, but unless he could identify them, there
wasn't much interest in restoring them. His solution was to modify a slide
projector and take digital photos of the result. He sent photos to film
historian Alison McMahan (who will speak Friday at the Walker). She suggested he
contact the American Film Institute at the Library of Congress, which ended up
restoring it.
Navone took criticism from some in the restoration community for sitting too
long on his find.
"Congratulations that 'A Fool and His Money' is found. But enough of chit-chat
on the Internet," sniffed Blaché scholar Anthony Slide. "The time is now to
preserve this title."
But Streible credits Navone and collectors like him.
"He wouldn't own the copyright [because the work is so old], but if he has the
only print, he could have hoarded it if he wanted to. Instead, he made it
accessible and donated it to the American Film Institute and got it preserved in
that way."
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IF YOU GO
Women With Vision
What: A monthlong series of films by women directors.
When: Wed.-March 22.
Where: Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Pl., Mpls.
Tickets: $5-$7. 612-375-7622.
Web site: http://www.walkerart.org
Friday: Alice Guy Blaché's 1912 "A Fool and His Money," and Lois Weber's films
"The Unshod Maiden" from 1932 and "The Blot" from 1921. (8 p.m.)
Bruce Calvert
(remove the xspam to reply)
Visit the Silent Film Still Archive
http://home.attbi.com/~silentfilm
Jasoncheaser
A fool and his money being shown again is all well and good but what about the
other films that were found?!
Does anyone know that that "Clew of the broken finger" or that Gertrude Norman
number turned out to be?
Jasoncheaser
WHAT that
sorry again