Germaine Dulac

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 Beudet, 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.

Biography Germaine Dulac was born in Amiens, France into an upper-middle-class family of a career military officer. Her mother, Madeleine-Claire Waymel came from a middle-class family of mainly career soldiers and industrialists. Her father, Pierre-Maurice Saisset-Schneider, was a captain of cavalry in the Second Army Corp. 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. Following the death of her parents, Dulac moved to Paris and combined her growing interests in socialism and feminism with a career in journalism. Dulac also found time to work on the editorial staff of La Fronde, a radical feminist journal of the time. After that, she began a relationship with Marie-Anne Colson-Malleville that lasted until the end of her life.

Following her long and influential cinema career, Dulac became the president of the Fédération des ciné-clubs, a group which promoted and presented the work of new young filmmakers, such as Joris Ivens and Jean Vigo. Dulac also taught film courses at the École Technique de Photographie et de Cinématographie on the rue de Vaugirard.

Career Before her filmmaking career, Dulac wrote articles for the feminist magazine La Fronde from 1900 to 1913. In 1909, she began writing for La Française as a journalist, then later as an editor until 1913. Here she interviewed a plethora of established women in France with the intention of solidifying women's roles in French society and politics. One of those women was Anna de Noailles, a French poet, as her first assignment. However, when Dulac got to her door, she panicked and interviewed Noaille's valet de chambre. Soon after, she moved to theatrical criticism, but still occasionally contributed to La Fronde. Her experience as a theatrical critic sparked her interest in film and kickstarted her career in film. 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 1920, all directed by Dulac and written by Hillel-Erlanger. These included Les Sœurs ennemies (1915/16; Dulac's first film), Vénus victrix, ou Dans l'ouragan de la vie (1917), Géo, le mystérieux (ou La vraie richesse, 1916), and others.

Dulac's first major success was Âmes de 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 more 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. 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.

In 1929, she was awarded the Legion of Honor in recognition of her contributions to the film industry in France. With the advent of sound film, Dulac's career shifted. From 1930, she returned to commercial work, producing newsreels for Pathé and later for Gaumont. She died in Paris on 20 July 1942.

Filmography The exact chronology of Dulac's oeuvre has not yet been established.