Search results
You are looking at 1 - 6 of 6 items for
- Author: Maryann De Julio x
- Refine by access: All content x
This book presents Germaine Dulac as one of the few women pioneers of cinema and a committed feminist. It draws on a wealth of archival material – both films and documents – to study Dulac’s ‘behind the scenes’ work on filmmaking and her social/political activism in the field of cinema. The biographical and historical introduction contextualizes Germaine Dulac’s situation at the heart of the avant-garde. Three chapters organize her films and career around the three kinds of cinema that she especially promoted: ‘psychological’, ‘pure’, and ‘documentary.’ The conclusion contrasts Dulac’s contributions with those of Alice Guy Blaché, another early women film pioneer, highlighting their differing paths to recognition.
This chapter explores Germaine Dulac’s feminist activism and her contributions to cinema, especially as they relate to aesthetics and economics in France during the early years of the twentieth century. The following are examined in light of her development as a filmmaker: her family background; her marriage in 1905 to Albert Dulac, with whom she founded, along with Irène Hillel-Erlanger (her first screenwriter), a small production company, D.H. Films; her work in serial melodramas; and her early career as a journalist at La Française, the organ of the French suffragist movement, and La Fronde, a radical feminist newspaper founded by Marguerite Durand. Also examined through archival material – public speeches and commentaries, and interviews and press releases – is Germaine Dulac’s role in promoting cinema through Ciné-Clubs and the Cinémathèque française. The chapter addresses in detail Dulac’s belief that cinema could offer women the means to earn a living.
This chapter treats Germaine Dulac’s ‘psychological films’, or what has come to be known as Dulac’s ‘Impressionist’ cinema, as she worked among the filmmakers of this first avant-garde movement, Marcel L’Herbier, Jean Epstein, Abel Gance, and Louis Delluc. For Dulac, Impressionist cinema meant the ‘psychological film’, which placed a character in a particular situation in order to penetrate the secret domain of their inner life. The chapter explores the extent to which Germaine Dulac was able to make the inner life of the characters in her films, as well as their reality, accessible to the public. Dulac’s ‘psychological films’ would help to define a specifically French style of cinema in the face of strong American post-war competition. Dulac herself tells us that her film La Cigarette (1919) marked the beginning of her work in psychological film, a genre that she would not abandon until La Folie des vaillants (1925), when she began to pursue more overtly her interest in musically composed film.
This chapter discusses Germaine Dulac’s ties to Dada/Surrealist cinema, especially as they relate to her controversial collaboration with Antonin Artaud on La Coquille et le clergyman (1927), and her own experimental films. I use Dulac’s statements regarding the production of La Coquille et le clergyman, along with her theoretical writings on cinema, to discuss the aesthetics and the structure of the film. I refer to Alain and Odette Virmaux’s Artaud/Dulac: La Coquille et le Clergyman. Essai d’élucidation d’une querelle mythique (Paris Expérimental, 1999) to present the history of the film’s reception. As a director and theoretician of experimental film, Dulac proclaimed her goal to make ‘pure’ cinema, which she spoke of as ‘musically constructed’ films or ‘films made according to the rules of visual music’. I examine L’Invitation au voyage (1927), Disque 957 (1929), Thème et variations (1929), and Etude cinématographique sur une arabesque (1929) as further examples of Dulac’s ‘pure’ cinema or ‘musically constructed’ films.
This chapter discusses Germaine Dulac’s work on documentary cinema, especially the film Le Cinéma au service de l’histoire (1935) and the small company France-Actualités, which she formed, associated with Gaumont, and which ran from 1932 to 1935. In keeping with the three kinds of documentary film that Dulac made in the 1930s – the newsreel, the compilation history, and the political campaign film – the chapter examines a sample of her newsreels; Le Cinéma au service de l’histoire, a film montage of archival footage; and Retour à la vie (1936). The chapter also examines Dulac’s scientific films and her unrealized projects. Representations of women are examined throughout as they relate to the social and cultural forces of their day.
The conclusion compares Germaine Dulac’s career and contributions to cinema with those of Alice Guy Blaché, another early woman film pioneer, in order to highlight their differing paths to recognition, and to bring out the specificity of Dulac’s work. Particular attention is paid to the themes and motifs in their work, especially their representation of women, to the fact that each had their own film production company, and to their promotion of cinema and mentoring of future filmmakers.