User Reviews

One evening in Paris in March of 1895, cinema pioneers Auguste and Louis Lumière hosted a special event, the very first public screening of projected motion pictures. In the audience that night were Leon Gaumont, maker of cameras and photographic equipment, and his secretary, 21 year-old Alice Guy. What they saw were "actualities," basic documentary works that were brief and simple, such as the now-familiar scene of workers leaving the Lumière factory. Guy was impressed, but felt the subject matter could be improved upon. So she sought permission from her employer to make her own motion pictures -- ones that told stories -- and it was granted. Her film-making career was underway.

The Gaumont concern became a motion picture plant, and from 1896 to 1906 Alice Guy was the company's head of production. Dozens of short films were made under her direction, in every genre: comedies, dramas, fantasies, Biblical epics, and even Westerns. She experimented with special effects, including double-exposure and synchronized sound. She married Herbert Blaché in 1907 and the two worked together, first in France and then in the U.S. They co-founded the Solax Company on the East Coast; Alice now ran her own studio.

She continued making films of all kinds, including features, eventually in Hollywood. But for a number of reasons, both personal and professional, the filmmaking career of Alice Guy-Blaché came to a premature halt shortly after the First World War. She returned to France in 1922 and made no more films. And for the rest of her long life, Guy-Blaché struggled to establish her place in motion picture annals. This proved to be a battle, for most of her films were lost or unavailable, and film historians tended to overlook her achievements or ascribe them to others.

Pamela Green's fascinating new documentary should help rectify the injustice done to this pioneer. I happened to see it the same weekend I caught Peter Bogdanovich's new Buster Keaton documentary, and the difference between the two is striking. While I enjoyed the Keaton tribute, it's traditional in every way, following the standard format for such works as it cuts back and forth between film excerpts, photos, and interviews. And of course, Keaton's life story and his comedies are familiar to buffs. But Green, whose subject is far more obscure, takes a more audacious approach: she gives us not only biographical material about Guy-Blaché, complete with the expected footage and photos, but also details her own efforts to dig up material on Alice Guy-Blaché and complete the documentary. This is illustrated throughout with lively animated graphics, which help clarify complicated details and keep the viewer engaged.

Happily, in addition to the excerpts from Guy-Blaché's films, Green also found two interviews with the filmmaker from her later years. It's fascinating to hear the woman herself discuss her life and career. We get the sense she was somewhat frustrated but nonetheless even-tempered and philosophical about setbacks as she describes her ongoing efforts to locate her surviving work and establish her claim as a genuine pioneer. A videotaped interview with Guy-Blaché's daughter conducted in the 1980s helps fill in some of the gaps.

In sum, this is a captivating story, told in a fresh, innovative fashion. It's must for anyone interested in the birth of the motion picture as an art form and an industry.

Greetings again from the darkness. History can easily be distorted by those who tell it. But the work and deeds of those who make history stands the test of time, and research can often right a wrong ... or at least provide credit where it's due. Such is the case with Pamela B Greene's project to uncover the truth, and finally give pioneer filmmaker Alice Guy-Blache her rightful place in the history of cinema.

Numerous familiar faces from the movie industry flash across the screen, and most admit they have never heard of Alice Guy-Blache. Even the few that recognize the name, don't know her story. This is how the movie starts ... letting off the hook those of us who pride ourselves on knowing the basics of cinema's origins. In 1895, the Lumiere Brothers presented the first short films on their newly developed Cinematographe. In the audience that day were Leon Gaumont and his assistant, Alice Guy.

Young Ms. Guy had a creative vision for this fascinating new technology. Rather than filming "real life", she would tell stories. And telling stories through moving pictures is exactly what she did more than 1000 times across two decades and two countries. In 1896, she directed THE CABBAGE FAIRY, one of the first narrative films ... and it was only the beginning for her. Director Greene explains that so many of those early films are lost, despite being described as sophisticated, emotional, and engaging works. As she moved from France to the United States (New Jersey), Alice founded Solax with her husband, and began experimenting with sound, special effects, gender roles, and story structure.

It's truly fascinating to see the clips from many of her films, along with snippets from interviews she sat for in 1964 (before passing away in 1968). Director Greene also includes interviews from Alice's daughter Simone, while I believe are from the 1980's. Simone is able to fill in some of the gaps in the historical timeline ... a timeline that includes many familiar names. It's also a timeline that results in an abrupt end to Alice's filmmaking when she relocates back to France after the war.

How did Alice Guy-Blache get lost in history? She was a contemporary of Melies, Lumiere and the Pathe brothers. She was not just the first woman director, she was also one of the first film directors, period. Though the search continues for many of her films, Oscar winning actress Jodie Foster narrates the mission of filmmaker Pamela B Greene to right a wrong ... Alice must no longer be forgotten by the industry she helped create.

Just an amazing documentary with hilarious and wonderful surprises all through it. Amazing research and use of archival film. There is one point where they show a walking tour of the film locations in Paris from Alice Guy-Blache's films and superimpose the 100+ year old films over the streets in modern day. Never seen that effect used quite that way. It shows the documentarians share their subject's inventiveness. All the interviews with the film academic community, the film archivist community, as well as working directors and actors really paint a picture of a true pioneer. This woman was there at the very beginning, inventing the art form and the business model. A real history lesson as well, as it takes you through the industry's changes as the world went through two World Wars. You forget that it is Jodie Foster narrating because the subject is so interesting. A real labor of love, I can tell a lot of people gave their time to remembering Alice Guy-Blache.

The director spent a decade of her life gathering evidence that Alice Guy-Blache was one of the founders of cinema, on the same level as the Lumiere Brothers, Georges Melies and Thomas Edison, and the case she makes is completely convincing. This film should be seen by everyone interested in movie history.

Pamela Green has done an incredible job showcasing the works of one of the most important figures in Cinema History, Alice Guy-Blache. From the clips of her films at Gaumont to her own studio Solax, Be Natural shines a light on a woman who for decades has been largely forgotten by mainstream audiences. One of my favorite scenes in the film was watching the attempts to recreate a couple of Alice Guy-Blache's films using the same camera she used. Using a camera that needed to be cranked at just the right speed to see real time speed on film makes you appreciate how much easier it is to film things today. As a student of film history, I want every moviegoer, whether they be casual or avid, to see this film and understand what Alice Guy-Blache contributed to the world of cinema. Pamela Green shows so many clips of unseen interviews with the director herself which gives you a good understanding of how she saw her own career. She's an inspiration to all aspiring filmmakers, women espeically. In the early 20th Century, Alice Guy-Blache was a woman who not only owned her own studio, but she was also a director, producer, screenwriter and actress to name a few. She also was one of the few who experimented with sound before Warner Bros perfected it with The Jazz Singer. She experimented with color tinting, special effects, and even had interracial casting which was unheard of at the time. Amazing job to everyone involved with this film, especially Pamela Green and a big thank you to the late great Alice Guy-Blache.

I watched that film during the BFI film festival and the director Pamela B Green graced us with a Q&A at the end. This documentary is a formidable labour of love, extraordinarily documented and thorough, on the life and career of the first film director who ... happened to be a woman! Alice Guy-Bache! Terrific documentary, although it was so fast-paced that I felt dizzy at times! A must watch!

I HAD heard of Guy-Blache, but then I have been a silent film geek for almost 50 years now. Have been catching what I can on-line of her work - so far, 1916 The Ocean Waif is the best, Doris Kenyon was a far more natural actress then Pickford or the Gish sisters based on that film.

I think that Simon could have skipped including so many phone interviews with distance relatives of Guy-Blache, (many of which could have used subtitles, I found them hard to understand) and included some longer clips of her actual films instead. It is obvious that a lot of work went into digging up information on Guy-Blache, and I appreciate it, but would rather have seen more of her work than her family life. Still, I gave it 9 out of 10 stars since the subject matter is so important to film history...and I LOVE the opening postcard collages that take the viewer back in time and across the ocean!

There is so much talk of the Hollywood Boys' Club and the lack of diversity right now. Anyone who cares should see this movie, about an early pioneer in the movies. A great untold story.

Pamela Green has many IMDB credits. However, most are for miscellaneous contributions and making credits for movies. She only has one prior credit for directing...and it was a short. Despite this, she really, really outdid herself here...making one of the very best documentaries about early filmmakers I've ever seen. It's on par with the brilliant documentaries by the Oscar-winning Kevin Brownlow...it's THAT good.

The life and career of Alice Guy has mostly been lost over time. This incredibly prolific director made at least 400-500 films (possibly double that number) and yet by the 1930s and 40s, she was out of the industry and forgotten. Only with the advent of the internet have her films been re-discovered...but only by a few. Green has apparently made it her mission to expose Guy's work to the masses and this documentary was just released on TCM this month.

So why did I adore this film? Well, I've already seen quite a few of Guy's films...so I appreciated her work and films. But I think the biggest reason I loved the documentary is all the effort Green and the rest put into making it...the countless interviews, the obtaining of video footage and notes with Alice Guy from her relatives as well as the amazing visual effects used to help tell the story of this film pioneer's work and life. A must-see for anyone who fancies themselves a film expert or historian.

In "Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché," Jodi Foster narrates Pamela B. Green's engaging, fascinating, informative, 103-minute documentary that focuses on the remarkable, obscure career of pioneering, Paris-born, first woman filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché (1873-1968) who wrote, directed, and/or produced more than 1,000 films many with unconventional subject matter through her film production company Solax and tells her story through candid interview snippets with the groundbreaking filmmaker in 1964, excerpts from her letters, and black-and-white film clips and photographs and includes insightful interviews with filmmakers (such as Ava DuVernay, Catherine Hardwicke, Diablo Cody, Patricia Riggen, Tacita Dean, Julie Taymor, John Chu, Ann Fletcher, Liz Goldwyn, Cari Beauchamp, Cecile Starr, Anne Fontaine, Mark Romanek, Peter Farrelly, Floria Sigismondi, Kevin Macdonald, Maxine Haleff, Patty Jenkins, Michel Hazanavicius, Marjane Satpari, and Gary Mairs), actors (such as Sir Ben Kingsley, Julie Delpy, Evan Rachel Wood, Geena Davis, Lake Bell, Andy Samberg, Janeane Garofolo, and Kathleen Turner), producers Marc Abraham and Stephanie Dillain, Co-President of Roadside Attractions Howard Cohen, screenwriter Gale Ann Hurd, film critic Peter Bogdanovich, historians (such as Mark Wanamaker, Anthony Slide, Kevin Brownlow, Glenn Myrent, Alison McMahon, Naum 'Kleiman, and Alan Williams), Guy-Blaché memoirs co-editor Claire Clouzet, film preservationist Serge Bromberg, professors (such as Drake Stutesman, Jane Goenes, Henry Jenkins, Gigi Pritzker, Richard Koszaeski, and Vanessa Schwartz), journalist Jean-Michel Frodon, film editor Walter Murch, film archivist Dino Everett, facial recognition analyst Steve Wilkins, costume designer Deborah Nadvolman Landis, lecturer Roland-Francois Lick, cinematographers (such as Pierre-William Glenn, Claire Wickell, and John Bailey), film collector Murray Glass, visual effects supervisor Mark Stetson, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President John Bailey, and granddaughter Tatiana Page-Relo.

I would gladly burn the last surviving negatives of alice guy blanches movies if it meant I didn't have to sit through another phone call visualization

I have been waiting for this movie for years, but I can't watch it. There are no subtitles, and the music is blaring so loudly, that I can't make out what is being said. It's like listening to somebody mumbling in a loud bar. I don't understand why you would drown out the narration in a movie like this. The pace is very high, you get all that information at breakneck speed, and then on top of it somebody plays music louder than the narrator. Why do that? And then, worst of all, leave out subtitles. It's not 1950, for crying out loud. Why spend all your time and work on such an elaborate movie and then throw it all away by making it inaccessible? Confounding.

My gosh, it's exhausting to watch this. The filmmaker(s) threw everything they could find and every technique they could think of into the blender, added a ton of amphetamines, and present everything at such a breathless pace that nothing ends up having any meaning--it's all so frantic and show-offy ("Look how innovative we can be in presenting this!") that the important information gets lost. If -everything- is vitally important, -nothing- is vitally important.

Guy-Blache's contribution to film history is too important to be presented in such a helter-skelter manner. Slow the hell down and let us absorb and appreciate it.

This is a fast-paced film through the long life of a remarkable woman. A pioneer of early cinema, Alice Guy was uncredited and overlooked, sometimes deliberately, and her foundational work was ignored for a long time.

Even by the film industry, who should have cherished her.

But besides that, it's an interesting journey through the process of finding her. Archives have some things, but finding great items in family attics and boxes was wonderful to see. It gives me hope that the stories of other hidden figures will continue to come out over time as people begin to look harder for women's stories.

Wonderful treasure. I had no idea going in to this film how it would pull me in.

I absolutely loved this film and grateful for the opportunity to meet the crew. I love everything about this film from the story to how it was shot. I felt as though I was taken back in time and it was simply delightful.

I would love to see more of this woman's work. She is very contemporary, and as one commenter noted, her comedic timing is superb. She presents a feminist point of view that is quite natural, without a hint of blame or guilt, and I loved it! It was like watching Blazing Saddles from a female point of view.

Pointless reviewer comments here whining about documentary layout but never considering the task the documentarians had to endure gathering films, pictures and documents over 100 yrs old from numerous countries and states. I believe Alice Guy words 1000% that spineless men she hired and worked together on films with took credit; also ex-husband, film historians and archivist falsely printed lies and no one came forth due to embarrassment and plagiarism ridicule. No hidden secret women and other minorities have coincidentally been written out of his-story endlessly!

From the excellent opening collage to the concluding remaking of her films, this is a fine documentary introduction to the career and life of the first female director (and writer, producer and studio head, etc.) and one of the first important filmmakers in general in history, Alice Guy--responsible for the earliest films of one of the biggest studio's in early cinema, Gaumont, including their early sound pictures, the founding of Solax productions at Fort Lee, New Jersey, and becoming an independent filmmaker in Hollywood after the Edison Trust monopolized the business on the East Coast. Through her memoir, interviews and other work, she was also responsible for the telling of her own story and significance in cinema history. This last aspect is especially well rendered in "Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché," which takes an investigatory approach to the piecing together of her narrative. Even the genealogical stuff fits well here and adds to the picture, and the filmmakers wisely didn't conceal the imprint of modern technology on the documentary, including work and communication via computers and the web--the sketch style, or "cinema of attractions" mode, of early cinema is even compared at one point to the infancy of YouTube videos. After all, Guy got her start in the business--rising from the ranks of secretary--because of her and the company's dealings with and fascination for technological innovation.

The story of her filmmaking career begins with the Lumière Brothers' demonstration of their Cinématographe to others in the photographic industry, including Léon Gaumont and Guy, on 22 March 1895, as opposed to the more-celebrated public screening 28 December 1895. The opening collage does a wonderful job of leading up to this moment, by moving back in time--representing the history of Hollywood movies, back through Fort Lee and Paris and with a brief overview of other pre-cinema and early cinema pioneers. I find it easy to overlook any deficiencies in the history here, consequently, because this collage does so well to indicate that Guy, or Gaumont or the Lumières and anyone else, for that matter, is a part of this long tapestry.

I'm beginning to retrace my own investigation of Guy's career, so I found this documentary an especially nice refresher on the subject. Among the new things I learned (or re-learned) was the Kinora footage dated to 1895 by the Lumières featuring Guy self-reflexively playing with the flip-book-like, motion-picture contraption. It's a fascinating bit of footage that complements nicely "Alice Guy Films a 'Phonoscène'" (1905). There's also the extension of Guy's influence to the likes of Alfred Hitchcock and Sergei Eisenstein, the latter who wrote specifically about Guy's "The Consequences of Feminism" (1906). I also don't recall having heard that besides Guy and her husband, Herbert Blaché, hiring America's first female director, Lois Weber, that "Mrs. Smalley" was allegedly also one of Herbert's mistresses. Make of that rumor regarding the evangelist filmmaker of such films as "Hypocrites" (1915) what you will, I suppose. A more amusing anecdote details how Guy checked for fingerprints on her scripts to catch the thief giving them to competing studios. Indeed, early cinema was rife with imitation, including by Guy (and Georges Méliès, Edwin S. Porter, Ferdinand Zecca, etc.), and flat-out plagiarism and bootlegging. Some were probably worse than others, though. Pathé could especially be notoriously successful at this, and, here, their "The Policemen's Little Run" is cited as a copy of Gaumont's "The Race for the Sausage" (both from 1907).

Guy is also credited with making one of the first films to feature an all African-American cast, "A Fool and His Money" (1912), although I would think claims of its primacy would need to contend with similar claims for the now-lost "The Railroad Porter" (1912), which also was directed by an African American, let alone "Something Good - Negro Kiss" (1898). Certainly, however, Guy is among the first, if not the very first, in accomplishing a great deal in film history. The most contentious of which, and to bring up the biggest of my slight problems with the documentary, is her claim of making the first story film, that of the cabbage patch.

Despite claiming to be based on Alison McMahan's book on Alice Guy-Blaché, the movie doesn't do justice to the uncertainty surrounding this film, or, rather, films. The earliest Cabbage-Patch Fairy film we have today is usually dated to c.1900 (except for on the web, where, frankly, many don't know what they're talking about) and credited to the Gaumont studio, but it's not known with certainty whether Guy made it (although I would guess she did, given the film's similarity to the rest of her oeuvre and her predominance at Gaumont) or whether it could be a copy of a 58mm film dating back to 1896. McMahan suggests it could be a remake, whether based on a hypothetical 1896 film or not, or the original film that Guy spoke of in interviews and her memoir. Meanwhile, Jane M. Gaines in her book "Pink-Slipped: What Happened to Women in the Silent Film Industries?" does well to cast doubt on it being a film from 1896. The documentary contesting (and by Wikipedia, among other sites, following suit), without offering evidence, that the earliest Cabbage-Patch Fairy film we have today is a remake of an 1896 production seems a simplification of the issue, at the least.

Complicating this further, as Gaines, McMahan and others have pointed out, is that Guy's descriptions actually better match her 1902 Cabbage-Patch Fairy film, "Midwife to the Upper Class" (although Guy, in an interview, disputed the "midwife" part of that title), which is a two-scene narrative film as she described, as opposed to the one shot-scene "cinema of attractions" mode of the c.1900 film. The photograph shown in the documentary of Guy next to a couple actors, while in the past attributed to the alleged 1896 production and dated rather confusingly in the movie, seems to clearly be from the 1902 film, too. Never mind, either, that there were similarly fictional productions before 1896, including the Lumière Brothers' "The Sprayer Sprayed" (1895). As mentioned in the documentary, the cabbage-patch plot also returned in Guy's "Madame's Cravings" (1907), so the director returned to this scenario based in a fable on childbirth multiple times, for sure, if not known precisely how many times she returned to it or always when. None of which takes away from the other qualities of the films, but the confusion and mystery is a good reminder that much of the history of early cinema has been lost and that, to an extent, the story of Alice Guy-Blaché remains untold.

What a treat! I absolutely love this movie, one of my 2019 favorite. Thanks to the dedication of the movie director, Pamela Green, and her years of research, we finally get to know Miss Alice Guy and her important role in early cinema. She is a true inspiration and her story is worth telling.

I went to see this film following a strong review in Melbourne (Australia). However, I thought that it was very poorly assembled as a film. It seemed that the film's makers were keen to include absolutely everything they could find, and the choice of order for all these clips was baffling as well as non-stop. I will be the first in the queue to see another film made to cover the astonishing life of Alice Guy-Blache - she deserves better than this attempt.

I knew that Alice Guy-Blache was a very important woman filmmaker. What I did not know is that she was THE woman filmmaker. She was "Patient Zero" among women directors. What a remarkable story!

But through the course of the documentary there was another pioneering woman creator of films that I came to fall in love with - Pamela B. Green. She is the director, writer, producer and spirtual spark of this film.

There have been some negative IMDB reviews about her style of filming. As someone who writes about the history of film I loved it. I watched it by myself after recording it on Turner Classic Movies. I was transfixed. About a half hour later I showed it to my wife, who has no interest in old films. She loved it.

I know what it is to assemble ten thousand little slivers to create something that looks like a whole picture. To join Ms. Green on her search was exciting and moving. Many times I was aware of tears burning down my cheeks. It was seeing the purity and the ardor of her search. It was so moving!

I am delighted that she has has started her own cinematic detective firm. If you're interested in seeing what she's doing now go take a look at

This is a very different style for documentaries. I hope that she considers continuing her fine work in this field.

It's a movie truism that when the facts and the legend conflict, you print the legend. Likewise, history is written by the victors. No Macauley ever wrote lays about ancient Carthage. Finally, when telling a story, keep it simple. That's how Alice Guy vanished for almost a century.

It's easy to attribute her becoming a non-person to sexism, and that's part of it, but other important figures are obscure. Who was Woodville Latham? Who screens the movies of George A. Smith? Those who survived and prospered told a story in which they had done it all, inventing everything, making great movies -- which you probably not have seen -- and fighting evil Thomas Edison all the while. That's a legend with a proper villain and all. Print it and forget the rest.

That's how we have forgotten the woman who may have been not just the first woman movie director, but the first movie director, full stop; first supervising producer of Gaumont's film studio, for fifteen years. An early innovator in demanding naturalistic performance; in color movies; second producer and director of a series of sound films -- the first was an Englishman who produced about a dozen in 1900, and then vanished -- likewise forgotten; the first woman to own her own studio. All of the evidence was here, just scattered across two continents, a dozen archives, and great-grandchildren's attics.

It's a remarkable story, very well told. I especially appreciated the montages and graphics. Maybe it will inspire you to seek out Madame's movies, which are likewise emerging from archives and other people's names. Some of them are excellent.

An ambitious film about pioneering film producer, director, and screenwriter Alice Guy-Blaché, and I have to say, the long overdue light that director Pamela B. Green shines on her is heartwarming. It's clearly a labor of love, and the number of people Green brings in and how worldwide this project was is impressive. The documentary sometimes ventures a little bit too far into the backstory of how all of the information was collected, and that's occasionally interesting too, but I would have preferred it to stick to Guy-Blaché, her films, and the direct influence she had with others in the industry. It also goes a little overboard with all of the graphic animations and overlays perhaps meant to bring life to the story, which wasn't necessary.

With that said, the film does get across enough of this fantastic woman's work and her personal life to be compelling. We see great clips showing her brilliant approach to directing actors ("Be Natural"), her humanism and sense of comedic timing, and her scene compositions and some special effects, which made me want to seek out more from her. I also liked the bits showing the influence on Eisenstein, the quote from Hitchcock, and how some of it was related to movies and comedy from the recent past, e.g. Juno and Andy Samberg from Saturday Night live. And by telling the story as Green did, we see not only how difficult it was to unearth the truth, but also the monstrous injustice that took place in the writing Guy-Blaché out of history by men over the decades that followed her career. It's quite infuriating, and a reminder of how important it is to scrutinize those who are writing history.

In March, month dedicated to women, I was pleased to see this documentary that gives a select overview of the life and work of French filmmaker Alice Guy (also known as Alice Guy-Blaché, by her married name), her place and most significant contributions to the evolution of cinema.

Narrated by Jodie Foster, I am surprised that director Pamela B. Green recognizes the appearance of Louis Lumière's cinematograph in 1895 as the moment in which cinema was born with technical strength and the ability to communicate, inform and entertain. It was Alice's turn as a young worker at the Gaumont company to make «The Cabbage Fairy» in 1896, the first fictional film made by a woman that is known to this day; experimenting with sound and painted film, prioritizing the motto "Be natural" as a method of acting among performers adept at posing in front of the cameras, becoming a powerful businesswoman in the United States, pioneering in directing an all-African-American cast in a movie, and introducing a feminine vision in her stories, as in her successful «The Life of Christ» (1906), in which she privileged the relationship of Jesus with the women around him.

However, Alice Guy died without having received the recognition she deserved for her work in France and the United States. In 1920 she made her last film, she divorced her husband Herbert Blaché and returned to France with her two children. A decade in the United States was enough to be forgotten in her native country and gradually her name was erased from the history of the Gaumont studios and, worse still, from the history of cinema, a situation aggravated by the crediting of some of her films to male directors and the loss of many of her movies. Until her death in 1968 Alice Guy tried to find them, but she died without rectifying the denial of her merits, without publishing her memoirs or recovering her place in the history of cinema. "My youth, my lack of experience, my sex," she once declared, "all conspired against me."

The documentary is often fascinating, following director Green's search for lost memory, traces, letters, photos, audio recordings, videotapes in disuse (such as U-Matic), film clips, testimonials from relatives, friends, specialists and colleagues, on both sides of the Atlantic... Alice Guy would be very pleased.