Date of Birth: 17 November 1882 Birthplace: Amiens, Picardy, France Date of Death: 20 July 1942 Occupation: Film Director, Screenwriter, Producer
Biography, by Elisabeth-Christine Muelsch: Germaine Dulac was a feminist filmmaker and critic, whose films and theoretical writings were instrumental in establishing cinema as an art form. She promoted film as the 7th art, not only through her work as a film theorist and film director, but also by founding French film clubs (eventually serving as the president of the Fédération des ciné-clubs) that became an important venue for young filmmakers and cinematographers to show their work. Today, she is best known for her impressionist film La Souriante Madame Beudet (The Smiling Madame Beudet, 1922/23) and her surrealist film La Coquille et le Clergyman (The Seashell and the Clergyman, 1928), primarily also, because the large body of her experimental and commercial films is still not widely accessible. Germaine Dulac was born Charlotte Élisabeth Germaine Saisset-Schneider on November 17, 1882 in Amiens, France. Although the family was well-to-do, Germaine had to face an instable childhood. The father, a career officer, moved frequently, and her depressive mother spent time in mental institutions on and off. Thus, Germaine was sent to a convent school in central France. As a young girl, she was exposed to upper-class conservative Catholic values, and thanks to her Parisian grandmother with whom she stayed when on vacation, she was able to discover the plethora of the Parisian arts. Initially, Germaine was rather apprehensive of cinema considering it, like many members of the bourgeoisie, a lowbrow art. During a visit to the Gaumont Palace, she felt that the symphonic orchestra was wasted on the silent movie. This would gradually change, and she would begin seeing parallels between music and film, especially in their ability to evoke strong emotional responses in the listener/viewer. The image became equal to a musical note, and Germaine compared a careful montage of images to the creation of a symphony. Through her uncle Raymond Saisset-Schneider, a socialist, she would meet her future husband Albert Dulac, who fostered her interest in philosophy, in left-wing politics and in unions; influences that would pave the way for her engagement in women’s associations and ciné-clubs. Shortly after her wedding, she embraced the pursuit of her feminist agenda, writing for La Française, first as a journalist and later on also as a theatre critic. Simultaneously, she also wrote her own theatre plays. Her homo-erotic desires, surfaced when she encountered the dancer Stasia de Napierkowska, whom she followed to the film studios in Rome. Her husband remained supportive of Germaine, accepting her relationship with Stasia as well as her ensuing lesbian relationships. The Dulacs only divorced in 1922. During WWI Germaine met her lover the poet Irène Hillel-Erlanger, and together they founded D.H. Films (standing for Dulac and Hillinger) in 1916. Germaine produced her first films and was able to recruit the famous stage actress Suzanne Desprès for her film Les Sœurs ennemies. In 1917, she wrote her first theoretical article “Mise en scène” published in Le Film, in which she defended cinema as a new art form. Le Film’s editor -in -chief Louis Delluc promoted her as an up -and -coming film director who pursued a decidedly “French” style. His comments were not only that flattering because his fiancée, the actress Ève Francis, played in Âmes de fous (1917-18), a serial written and directed by Germaine, but also because Germaine was developing a style, impressionism, that was decidedly different from American cinema. Her breakthrough came with the La Souriante Madame Beudet, in which Germaine used a wide range of impressionist filming techniques to convey the thoughts and desires of Mme Beudet, thus producing, what could be called, a stream-of-consciousness filming technique. Germaine continued her filming career throughout the 1920s. In 1930, she was hired as the artistic director at Gaumont, supervising numerous films in France and Germany, eventually founding and directing Gaumont newsreel. She remained committed to feminist issues, e.g., working on a project “Les femmes et le cinéma” in 1938, and to the use of film as an educational tool. After the death of Irène Hillel-Erlanger in 1920, Marie-Anne Colson-Malleville became Germaine’s lifelong partner. She would eventually devote Germaine’s entire manuscript to the Cinémathèque française. Germaine Dulac died in Paris in 1942.
Additional Resources:
Dulac, Germaine (1994). Écrits sur le cinéma: (textes réunis par Prosper Hillairet). Éditions Paris Expérimental. ISBN2-9500635-5-1
Flitterman-Lewis, Sandy (1996). To Desire Differently: Feminism and the French Cinema. Columbia University Press. ISBN978-0-231-10497-5