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contribution by Guy-Blaché
...(Many historians support Guy’s claim that her fairy tale preceded the story films of Georges Méliès, but a few date her film to as late as 1900.) She soon thereafter became the Gaumont film company’s head of production, directing nearly all the Gaumont films made until 1905, when the company’s growth necessitated her hiring additional directors.
Pathé’s only serious rival on the Continent at this time was Gaumont Pictures, founded by the engineer-inventor Léon Gaumont in 1895. Though never more than one-fourth the size of Pathé, Gaumont followed the same pattern of expansion, manufacturing its own equipment and mass-producing films under a supervising director (through 1906, Alice Guy, the cinema’s first female...