When we talk about the pioneers of silent film, we usually end up talking about men like D.W. Griffith, Rex Ingram, Fritz Lang, Cecil B. DeMille, Charles Chaplin, and William Desmond Taylor.  And it is true that these men were essential to creating the language through which future filmmakers would tell stories of their own.

However, for every important silent filmmaker who continues to be celebrated, there are hundreds of just as important directors who are no longer remembered.  When you combine the tendency of the public to automatically dismiss any film made before the advent of sound with the fact that many of the best silent films are now lost films, it’s both understandable and unfortunate that several pioneering directors have been forgotten.

Alice Guy-Blaché may be a forgotten director but, in her way, she is just as important to the development of film as Griffith and DeMille.  The French-born Alice Guy directed her first film in 1896, when she was only 23 years old.  She is considered, by most film historians, to be the first female director and she was also one of the first directors to experiment with ways to use film to tell a narrative story.  (Narrative is something that we now take for granted but, when the movies were still in their infancy as an art form, the idea of using the techniques of filmmaking to tell a story was truly revolutionary.)

Alice Guy married Herbert Blaché in 1907 and moved with him to the United States.  It was here that she made the majority of her films.  She eventually founded the New York-based Solax Company, which was the largest film studio in pre-Hollywood America.  As of this writing, she remains the first and only woman to have owned her own film studio.

Below, you’ll find Alice Guy Blaché’s 1912 film, Fallen Leaves.  With a running time of 11 minutes, Fallen Leaves tells the story of a young woman stricken with tuberculosis and her younger sister’s desperate attempts to save her life.  This is one of my favorite silent films because it is just such an incredibly emotional and sweet-natured story.  Tears come to my eyes whenever I see the little sister starting to gather up her leaves.  So, put on some properly dramatic music and enjoy Fallen Leaves.