Germaine Dulac
| Germaine Dulac | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Charlotte Elisabeth Germaine Saisset-Schneider November 17, 1882 Amiens, Somme, Picardy, France |
| Died | July 20, 1942 (aged 59) Paris, France |
| Occupation | Film director, Screenwriter, Producer |
| Years active | 1915–c.1934 |
| Spouse | Louis-Albert Dulac (1906–1920) |
Germaine Dulac (born Charlotte Elisabeth Germaine Saisset-Schneider) (17 November 1882 – 20 July 1942) was a French filmmaker, film theorist, journalist and critic. She was born in Amiens and moved to Paris in early childhood. A few years after her marriage she embarked on a journalistic career in a feminist magazine, and later became interested in film. With the help of her husband and friend she founded a film company and directed a few commercial works before slowly moving into Impressionist and Surrealist territory. She is best known today for her Impressionist film, La Souriante Madame Beudet ("The Smiling Madam Beaudet", 1922/23), and her Surrealist experiment, La Coquille et le Clergyman ("The Seashell and the Clergyman", 1928). Her career as filmmaker suffered after the introduction of sound film and she spent the last decade of her life working on newsreels for Pathé and Gaumont.
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[edit] Biography
Germaine Dulac was born in Amiens, France into an upper middle class family of a career military officer. Since her father's job required the family to frequently move between small garrison towns, Germaine was sent to live with her grandmother in Paris. She soon became interested in art and studied music, painting, and theater. In 1905 she married Louis-Albert Dulac, an agricultural engineer who also came from an upper class family. Four years later she began writing for La Française, a feminist magazine where she eventually became the drama critic.[1]
Dulac became interested in film in 1914 through her friend, actress Stacia Napierkowska. The two women traveled to Italy together shortly before World War I; Napierkowska was to act in a Film d'Art film, and Dulac learned the basics of the medium during that trip. Soon after her return to France she decided to start a film company. Dulac and writer Irène Hillel-Erlanger then founded D.H. Films, with financial support provided by Dulac's husband. The company produced several films between 1915 and 20, all directed by Dulac and written by Hillel-Erlanger. These included Les soeurs ennemies (1915/16; Dulac's first film), Vénus Victrix, ou Dans l'ouragan de la vie (1917), Géo, le mystérieux (La vraie richesse, 1916), and others.[2][3]
Dulac's first major success was Âmes des fous (1918), a serial melodrama written by Dulac herself. The film features an early appearance of actress Ève Francis, who introduced Dulac to her friend (later husband) Louis Delluc, filmmaker and critic. A short time later Dulac and Delluc collaborated on La fête espagnole ("Spanish Fiesta", 1920), another film featuring Francis, which was proclaimed one of the decade's most influential films and, allegedly, a major French Impressionist Cinema work. However, only a few excerpts from the film exist today. Dulac and Delluc went on to collaborate on a number of pictures.[2]
Dulac and her husband divorced in 1920.[4] She continued her career in filmmaking, producing both simple commercial films and complex pre-Surrealist narratives such as two of her most famous works: La Souriante Madame Beudet ("The Smiling Madam Beaudet", 1922/23) and La Coquille et le Clergyman ("The Seashell and the Clergyman", 1928).[2] Both films were released before the epoch-making Un Chien Andalou (1929) by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí, and La Coquille et le Clergyman is sometimes credited as the first Surrealist film; however, some scholars, such as Ephraim Katz, consider Dulac first and foremost an Impressionist filmmaker.[citation needed] Dulac's goal of "pure cinema" and some of her works inspired the French Cinema pur film movement. Her other important experimental films include several shorts based on music: Disque(s) 957 (1928/29; based on Chopin) and Thème et variations (1928/29; classical music), and others from the same period.
With the advent of sound film, Dulac's career started its decline. From about 1930 she returned to commercial work, producing newsreels for Pathé and later for Gaumont. She died in Paris on 20 July 1942.
[edit] Filmography
The exact chronology of Dulac's oeuvre has not yet been established. The dates given here are from the list compiled in Pallister 1997, 64–67, unless stated otherwise.
- Les soeurs ennemies (1915; first film)
- Géo, le mystérieux (also known as La vraie richesse, Mysterious George and True Wealth) (1916)
- Les soeurs ennemies (1916)
- Vénus Victrix, ou Dans l'ouragan de la vie (1917)
- La jeune fille la plus méritante de France (1918)[5]
- Âmes des fous (1918; serial film)
- Le bonheur des autres (1918)
- La fête espagnole (Pallister: 1919, Williams: 1920)
- La cigarette (1919)
- Malencontre (1920)
- Gossette (Pallister: 1920, Katz: 1923, Foster: 1922–23. Six episodes)
- La belle dame sans merci (1921)
- La mort du soleil (1922)
- Werther (1922; unfinished)
- La Souriante Madame Beudet (Pallister: 1922–1928?, Katz: 1923)
- Le diable dans la ville (1924)
- Âme d'artiste (1925)
- Antoinette Sabrier (Pallister: 1927, Katz: 1926)
- Le cinéma au service de l'histoire (1927; compilation)
- L'invitation au voyage (1927)
- La coquille et le clergyman (1927)
- Celles qui s'en font (1928)[5]
- Disque(s) 957 (Pallister: 1928, Katz and Foster: 1929)
- Thème et variations (Pallister: 1928, Katz: 1929)
- [La] germination d'un haricot (1928; documentary)
- Danses espagnoles (1928)[5]
- [La] Princesse Mandane (1929)
- Étude cinégraphique sur une arabesque (1929)
- Je n'ai plus rien (1934)[5]
[edit] Notes
- ^ Williams 1992, 144–47.
- ^ a b c Williams 1992, 146.
- ^ Dates from Pallister 1997, 64.
- ^ Pallister 1997, 64.
- ^ a b c d Germaine Dulac at the Internet Movie Database
[edit] References
- Pallister, Janis L. (1997). French-Speaking Women Film Directors: A Guide. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN 9780838637364.
- Williams, Alan Larson (1992). Republic of Images: A History of French Filmmaking. Harvard University Press. ISBN 9780674762688.
[edit] Further reading
- Dozoretz, Wendy. 1982. Germaine Dulac : Filmmaker, Polemicist, Theoretician. Diss., New York University, 362 pp.
- Flitterman-Lewis, Sandy. 1996. To Desire Differently: Feminism and the French Cinema. Columbia University Press. ISBN 9780231104975
- Ford, Charles. Germaine Dulac : 1882 - 1942, Paris : Avant-Scène du Cinéma, 1968, 48 p. (Serie: Anthologie du cinéma ; 31)
- Katz, Ephraim; Fred Klein, Ronald Dean Nolan (2005). The Film Encyclopedia (5th Edition ed.). New York: HarperPerennial. ISBN 0-06-074214-3.
