Inside Man

Director Spike Lee

INSIDE MAN            B+                                                                                                                 USA  (129 mi)  2006  d: Spike Lee

You know, there’s a famous saying by the Baron de Rothschild, “When there’s blood in the streets, buy property.”                                                                                                 —Madeleine White (Jodie Foster)

A huge commercial success for Lee, one of the few features he directed that he did not write, his only feature to be No. 1 at the box office in the first week of its release, ultimately grossing $185 million, more than four times the budget of $45 million, his most profitable film to date, yet his plans for a sequel never materialized, reassigned elsewhere as INSIDE MAN: MOST WANTED (2019), a tepid film that ended up on Netflix.  Beginning with a Bollywood sounding opening song, Inside Man " Chaiyya Chaiyya" (Version RB) - YouTube YouTube (7:22), adding a cultural universality which plays in perfect precision to a distinctive New York City opening montage, while Dalton Russell (Clive Owen), a criminal mastermind in close-up, speaking directly to the camera, narrates a robbery taking place at the main branch of the Manhattan Trust Bank, a fictional institution located at Wall Street and Broadway, where capitalism intersects with show business, confessing to a perfect crime, apparently from an enclosed prison cell, so the entire film may be playing back in flashback mode.  Taking control of the bank while disguised as house painters, each of the four bank robbers are wearing sunglasses and masks, as they immediately dismantle the surveillance system while taking customers and bank employees as hostages, blindfolding and separating them, tying their hands behind their backs, then switching them from room to room, never allowing hostages or viewers to be certain of who they are, identifying themselves only as derivations of the name Steve (Carlos Andrés Gómez), like Stevie (Kim Director), or Steve-O (James Ransone).  Immediately the bank is surrounded by a horde of NYPD officers as well as snipers on the roofs, commanded by Captain Darius (Willem Dafoe), all targeting the entrance.  Each time the robbers release a hostage, they are accompanied by a message, yet police immediately point their guns and handcuff them before taking them away, each one viewed as a suspect until proven otherwise.  One is a Sikh bank employee, Vikram Walia (Waris Ahluwalia), who is mandhandled by the police, thinking he’s carrying a bomb as he looks like an Arab, causing him to lose his turban, a symbol of religious observance, showing no regard whatsoever for his loss, despite his repeated pleading, where the belligerence of the predominantly white NYPD is all-consuming, wearing their pronounced racism on their sleeve, as they know only one gear, brute ferocity, which suggests a crude indifference.  It must be said, few capture the rhythm and earthy style of New York City like Spike Lee, who seems to delight in the way people express themselves, using different pronunciations, different inflections in their speech, all seemingly spewing profanity, with the director having an eye and ear for detail, often injecting humor, beautifully encapsulating a city as only he can.  Opening in the theaters at the same time as another thriller, V FOR VENDETTA (2005), it’s interesting that both use a similar plot device in the commission of a crime, dressing all the hostages up in the exact same masks and jump suits that they are wearing while V improbably sends Guy Fawkes masks to everyone in London to thoroughly confuse the police establishment, in each case allowing the criminals to perfectly blend into the crowd.  This has the makings of another bank heist caper, and even pays homage in the script to Dog Day Afternoon (1975), using two actors recreating similar roles from that earlier film, a hostage, Marcia Jean Kurtz, and a pizza delivery guy, Lionel Pina, while the pizza itself comes from Sal’s Famous Pizzeria, a reference to Do the Right Thing (1989), but this one surprisingly has other hidden motives buried beneath the layers of the 9/11 rubble, namely the politically connected cover ups of New York City’s finest, who conveniently make deals to keep the real problems from ever surfacing.  Shot by Matthew Libatique, mostly with handheld cameras, using a distinct visual style, favoring the long, continuous shot, this is a film simmering with a cross-section of New York City sounds and surfaces, featuring a variety of ethnic groups, even a street-wise 8-year old child (Amir Ali Said) playing what amounts to the world’s most violent video game.  Unafraid of the bank robbers, as he’s from “Brooklyn,” he tells the police he actually identifies with the robbers, as they’re just trying to get paid.  The same can not be said for the rest of the hostages, most of whom cower in fear, made to strip down to their underwear and wear identical outfits, forced to hand over their cellphones to the robbers, yet one wise guy tries to outsmart them, quickly identified, pulled into another room, and through a translucent window of a closed room, we see him getting the snot beaten out of him, a clever device that keeps all the others in line.  The shot through the window, captured in real time, shares the same spatial viewpoint of the hostages, where viewers see what other hostages see, which allows us to easily identify with them.  Another shot shows Russell with the young kid sitting alone in the bank vault, offering him a pizza slice and a drink, seen chatting casually, a shot that allows viewers to identify with the bank robbers, as they’re not seen as such bad guys, demonstrating compassion, going out of their way to take an interest in this kid, undermining the stereotype of a criminal mentality.  This shot actually expands the ambiguous nature of Russell, whose motives remain unclear throughout, as they’re not really interested in taking the money, but seem obsessed by the contents in one particular safety deposit box.  This subverts the motives of a typical bank heist film, while confusing both the cops and audiences alike, adding a level of psychological mystery and intrigue not normally seen in genre movies.            

Denzel Washington plays another cocky police officer, Detective Keith Frazier, along with his sidekick, Bill Mitchell (Chiwetel Ejiofor), making a living as a smooth-talking hostage negotiator.  In what appears to be an homage to SHAFT (1971), he keeps his girlfriend (Cassandra Freeman) simmering in the sheets while he’s out taking care of the city’s business, matching wits with the bad guys.  Here he’s under police investigation on a drug case that’s suspiciously missing $140,000, but due to a convenient police personnel absence, he’s called into action on a bank heist in progress with hostages.  Once this makes the news, Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer), the bank CEO, a financier with something to hide, goes into action to protect his shameful secrets which are contained in an unregistered safety deposit box, calling in a mysterious, ultra-professional power broker, or fixer, an unusually perky Jodie Foster as Madeleine White, a shadowy figure dressed in stiletto heels and sharp designer suits who greases the wheels for the super rich and either clears the way for what they want or makes their problems disappear, all for huge sums of money.  The rest of the film unravels through various hierarchies, as there’s a chain of command in place at every level, the perpetrators of the crime, and those responsible for providing law and order, where White, in speaking to Frazier, makes it clear she is working above his pay grade, setting him straight, so to speak, reminding him of “his place.”  In other words, blacks are not welcome in the ultra elite confines of Wall Street business transactions.  The objectives of both remain obscure and unclear, covered up in a politically recognizable public persona that we all see on TV, where motives and explanations remain fairly standard, while their real purpose remains secretive and hidden and may never see the light of day.  Both sides secretly plant security microphones on each other, with the police foiled by a mastermind crook who is on to their techniques, as what the police microphone picks up is a long drawn-out speech by a former Albanian President, now deceased, alerting them that their surveillance efforts failed.  Back and forth negotiations have also stalled, with Frazier making no headway, yet he remains baffled by the case, developing a healthy respect for his counterpart who seems to anticipate his every move.  In a climactic moment, as the police are about to send in a SWAT team, Frazier becomes aware of a microphone sent out with one of the earlier hostages, allowing the robbers to listen to the police plans the entire time, including this police raid storming the bank.  Having prepared for this, the robbers gather all the hostages, mixed together with the robbers themselves, all dressed alike, and release them out the front door, where it’s virtually impossible to detect differences between victims and perpetrators.  The police point their guns, push everyone to the ground, and handcuff each hostage, while taking them into custody on police buses.  As it turns out, none of the hostages recognize any of the robbers, and perhaps more surprisingly, no money was taken.  According to the bank, nothing is missing, so no real crime occurred.  Frazier is ordered to bury the case, though obvious questions remain as to the unanswered motive, which has cleverly been kept secret, though Frazier is on to the missing safe deposit box.  What typically happens is that anyone getting too close is either transferred, fired, or their careers ruined.  In this film, Washington’s cop mixes it up with some pretty exclusive company.  Lee pitched the film to Hollywood executives as a star-ridden movie that, unlike his previous films, did not contain a racial or polarizing narrative.  The promotion of the film accentuated a typical box office strategy of an action-packed bank heist thriller, omitting Lee’s name from the marketing campaign, as studios found him too didactic and controversial politically, only to discover a suspenseful narrative, written by first-time screenwriter Russell Gewirtz, a former lawyer, that was actually about contemporary racism, anti-Semiticsm, and a lust for capitalist greed, with an indirect commentary on the Patriot Act’s forced standardization of national diversity, centered around New York and the homogenization of the city’s culture.  One remarkable aspect of the film is the utilization of film noir and neo-noir to construct a counter-narrative on security and surveillance that causes confusion, pointing out the prevalent use of cameras both inside and outside the bank, while also taking a look at the erasure of history through the narrative and stylistic conventions of an action film.  This film makes surprising references to the Holocaust, noting what kind of blatant thievery was taking place by the Nazi’s, as Jews transported to death camps were in no position to protect their financial interests, so their wealth was stolen blindly by their adversaries, then covered up in the aftermath of war, with some cashing in their stolen investments to make a killing, showing a structurally corrupt system still at work today.  Basically Lee made a film within the studio system that shrewdly criticizes the system.  Without ever offering a history lesson, this is key to understanding the underlying complexity of this film, and what really makes it worth watching, as sprinkled throughout Lee’s career his movies have taken an interest in critical moments in history.  Many viewers, however, missed this aspect of the film, believing he left his moral concerns behind, finding the film’s lack of a political agenda refreshing.

One of the few films that connected 9/11 to the impending stock market crash of 2007 (Financial crisis of 2007–2008 - Wikipedia), with a multitude of bank foreclosures, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, where minorities took the greatest hit, and few were ever held accountable.  Fittingly, most of the action is set on Wall Street.  In the period after 9/11, the pressure on dissent reached nearly all aspects of American society, with unjustified arrests, interrogations of demonstrators, a presence of FBI agents on college campuses, libraries forced to inform federal authorities about books patrons checked out, citizens removed or arrested from malls for wearing “peace” T-shirts, with students and teachers censored from schools and universities.  While those acts are blatantly unconstitutional, the Patriot Act allows for unprecedented state surveillance, signed literally weeks after the terrorist bombings with virtually no public debate, and with vast public approval, many believing it would help authorities track down the enemies living amongst us, yet it led to routine mistreatment of citizens, no longer accorded civil liberties, as anyone could become a suspect in the war on terrorism.  Open suspicion by police is an underlying theme of the film, as anyone displaying Arab descent is immediately viewed as a criminal, openly mistreated, denied any rights, with ordinary citizens showing little concern for what they routinely see happening.  In fact, despite being intimidated and tied up by the robbers, threatened to be killed, none of the hostages show any willingness to cooperate with police, as Lee cleverly shows New Yorkers are hardly united behind law enforcement.  This film borrows from 80’s film noir, like Michael Mann’s Thief (1981), or William Friedkin’s To Live and Die in LA (1985), including an expressionistic use of architecture, a restrained color palette, exaggerated and dramatic shadows and silhouettes, with a giant American flag draped over the New York Stock Exchange building.  One of the talks between Frazier and Madeleine White takes place in front of a mural of the American flag, with the stripes replaced by the words “We will never forget.”  With a screen time of just seconds, happening during a furious rush of excitement, many never recall even seeing this blatant visual cue, while a discussion among hostages attempts to evaluate whether the robbers could be terrorists, with one emphatically denouncing that prospect, a Columbia professor, a lawyer with experience in these matters, claiming they are simply robbers.  Again, while brief, this connects the film to 9/11, educating the audience that robbers are different than terrorists, proven by the fact that they all get out of there alive.  What we’ve really learned from this bank fiasco is that the system is corrupt, that news reports barely touch the surface, as only a few involved actually know what happened, with the real crime remaining hidden under layers of subterfuge, shrouded in ambiguity, yet Frazier has the wherewithal to see it through, turning him into a neo-noir hero, reminiscent of Jack Nicholson’s Jake Gittes in CHINATOWN (1974), where his moral ambiguity is hidden by Denzel Washington’s charismatic performance.  At the time of the film’s release, it was viewed almost exclusively as an electrifying commercial thriller, with little else read into it.  As a result, while much has been written about Spike Lee’s films overall, very little critical evaluation has been written about this particular film among researchers or critics alike.  While the thriller aspect is well-made, suspenseful, and holds our interest throughout an anxious 24-hour day, from the morning of the heist until the next morning, with a few bleached-out hostage interrogation scenes that are told out of order, it’s the unpredictable people factor that rises above other similar films, such as the story of the beat cop who discovered the robbery in progress, Sergeant Collins (Victor Colicchio), who later tells Frazier the story of how a gun was first pointed in his face, using pointedly racial imagery, or the actions of the police SWAT team, treating all innocent hostages just like criminals, especially those fitting Arabic profiles, or an interesting turn of events which requires, of all things, an Albanian translator, who negotiates her services only if her basketful of parking tickets can disappear.  These little slice-of-life interludes humanize this otherwise typical genre film, yet the movie changes gears and moods when it gives way to subtextual commentary about the corrupt foundation of global capitalism, including racial and cultural tensions associated with globalized problems, like the formation of an international workforce.  As an aside, Frazier distinguishes himself by being so much in touch with the multi-ethnic sounds of the street, rising to an art form, while the clueless and out of touch language of the rich white suits at the top, such as the interplay between the mayor, Foster, or Plummer, the proverbial “powers that be,” stands in stark contrast, speaking the language of Wall Street.  Seemingly lifeless and inert, a vague, empty aspect of an empowered culture, where you wonder who they could possibly speak for in terms of representation, yet this speaks volumes about the cultural divide, as they are products of a privileged elite, not really in touch with the common man, which is just another distinguishing aspect of the film, and part of the intelligence and skillful pacing that is established throughout.  However, the coolness factor of both Owen and Washington is superb in a test of wills between two indomitable characters, while brewing just under the surface are wheels in motion where they could easily fly off the handle at any second, yet both maintain a charming wit and calm that perhaps no one else in the business could provide.  

Be Natural: The Untold Story of Alice Guy-Blaché

Portrait of filmmaker Alice Guy-Blaché in 1912 

Filmmaker Pamela B. Green 

BE NATURAL:  THE UNTOLD STORY OF ALICE GUY-BLACHÉ                B+                  

USA  (103 mi)  2018 d:  Pamela B. Green                 Official Site

There is nothing connected with the staging of a motion picture that a woman cannot do as easily as a man, and there is no reason why she cannot completely master every technicality of the art…The technique of the drama has been mastered by so many women that it is considered as much her field as a man’s and its adaptation to picture work in no way removes it from her sphere.  The technique of motion picture photography like the technique of the drama is fitted to a woman’s activities.

― Alice Guy-Blaché, Motion Picture World, 1914

Not particularly stellar filmmaking, which is unfortunate considering the massive importance of the subject, where the continuous music is overly bouncy and upbeat, not really a match for the more reflective aspects of the film, with a busy documentary stylization recalling Errol Morris, nonetheless, the subject matter is essential, mandatory viewing, literally altering the course of cinema history, as French director Alice Guy-Blaché was there at the birth of cinema, right alongside the Lumière and Pathé Brothers, and Georges Méliès, likely the only woman filmmaker working anywhere in the world from the years 1896 to 1905, eventually directing, writing, or producing more than 1000 films, including 150 with synchronized sound, which is astonishing, yet until recently little was known about her, largely omitted from the history books, with most in the industry completely in the dark about her contributions to cinema, as they had never heard of her.  What this film reveals may be shocking to some, among the more important revelations in the history of cinema, yet part of the story is how it was suppressed for so long, taking over 100 years to finally come to light, which is simply absurd, where you have to consider the circumstances of who suppressed this history and why, and you get a picture of an industry where men typically devalue women, despite their professional talent, and are so ambitiously willing to get ahead that they place their names on films they didn’t make, which if it isn’t criminal, it ought to be, as the names of her male assistants or actors have been falsely listed by film archivists and historians as the directors of these early films.  The shock isn’t so much that Guy-Blaché made these films, instead it’s the massive scheme to delete her name from history, which nearly succeeded.  With such a daunting task, this may just be the beginning, the tip of the iceberg, with well over 100 interview subjects (many non-experts who seem randomly chosen), including Guy-Blaché’s daughter, Simone Blaché, a narration from Jodie Foster, and a walking tour of the film locations in Paris from Guy- Blaché’s films, cleverly superimposing the 100-year old films over the streets seen today, where a more thorough examination may yet be years away in the future, as a compilation of her entire output has not yet been established, as so many of her films were not preserved, but lost or destroyed from deterioration, as are 75% of all silent films.  Easily the most interesting authorities are the film historians and archivists who place Guy-Blaché in a historical context, though curiously, much of the extensive research to rediscover the wealth of her influence was done by Americans, not the French, who never took her seriously, content to listen to rumors and male-dominated appraisals, where they simply didn’t do the research, as even respected historical figures like Henri Langlois, the foremost and most famous film archivist of all time, founder of the Cinématheque Française and personally responsible for saving thousands of films, who actually knew her, refused to accept her place in history, completely unaware of the films she made.  Among the continuing problems, she’s not being taught in film schools, though now she is by far the most researched and studied female film pioneer.   

Trained as a typist and stenographer, viewed as a respectable middle-class job at the time, Alice Guy at the age of twenty-one was originally seeking a job opening from Felix-Max Richard at the Comptoire Général de la Photographie, a camera manufacturer in Paris, but he was out of the office, referred instead to the newly installed manager, Léon Gaumont, an engineer-inventor for the company who was not yet thirty himself.  Finding her letters of recommendation excellent, it was at that time highly unusual for a woman to have the requisite education and communication skills needed, suggesting he was concerned about her youth until she assured him, “It will pass.”  Knowing nothing about photography, she had to familiarize herself with the qualities of different cameras, types and sizes of plates, a variety of papers, focus lengths, chemical products, and shutter speeds, with women working 12-hour days at the time, earning twice the salary of her sisters and mother in their dressmaking jobs.  Both Gaumont and Guy were present in 1895 at the Société d’Encouragement pour l’Industrie Nationale in Paris when Auguste and Louis Lumière debuted the first motion pictures to a small group of colleagues and friends, including a small vignette of 1895, Lumiere, Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory (1895) YouTube (1:55), where you notice that most of the workers are women, with the Lumière’s eventually becoming known as the fathers of cinema.  Shortly afterwards, Gaumont founded the Gaumont Film Company with other associates, the first and oldest film company in the world, making short films to promote camera projectors, with Guy believing they could improve upon the model of filming actual events by telling compelling stories.  Gaumont allowed this request so long as “the mail doesn’t suffer,” assigning her as head of production where she started directing films, mostly one or two-minutes in length, including THE CABBAGE FAIRY (1896), La fée aux choux, ou la naissance des enfants 1900 - Silent Short Film - Alice Guy YouTube (59 seconds), telling the story of how children are born in a cabbage patch, a variation on the mythical stork delivering babies, remade in 1900 and again in 1902, also years later in the U.S. where this is arguably the second narrative film ever made, after the Lumiere’s L’ARROSEUR ARROSÉ (1895) [4k, 30 fps] L'Arroseur Arrosé (The Lumière Brothers, 1895) YouTube (1:07).  Describing Guy’s film, Alison McMahan writes in her book Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema, 2002 (Lost Visionary - Excerpt | Alice Guy Blaché), “This film was so successful that it sold eighty copies and had to be remade at least twice, as the original prints disintegrated.”  Guy remained head of production from 1896 to 1906, where the practice of the day included rival studios placing spies inside, stealing stories daily and producing them overnight, with Guy using forensic techniques to track down the culprit, a night janitor who was quickly fired.  She also edited her own works, making dozens of short films in every genre, comedies, dramas, fantasies, Biblical epics, and Westerns, including dance and travel films, creating the first feature films, pioneering techniques like close-ups (previously attributed to D.W. Griffith), real locations, or adding hand-tinted colors, even experimenting with special effects, like running a film backwards, or utilizing double-exposure, split screens, masking techniques, and synchronized sound, such as the Phonoscène, using the Gaumont Chronophone Sound-on-disc system, though most of these early films are lost, as no one envisioned film preservation, which is another business entirely. 

When Gaumont expanded his business to Nice, he needed more filmmakers, where it was Ms. Guy who recommended Louis Feuillade from within the company, having worked with him before, buying many of his scripts, encouraging him to direct them himself, becoming legendary in his own right, eventually becoming Artistic Director of Gaumont.  She also met a British gentleman named Herbert Blaché who initially worked as a replacement cinematographer before becoming her production manager, and though Ms. Guy in an interview acknowledges a particular dislike for British men, they got married shortly thereafter in 1907 (in France at that time married women weren’t allowed to work), with Gaumont moving him to the United States where the two formed The Solax Company on the East coast, allowing her husband to handle the business end (with Gaumont distributing the films) while Guy-Blaché was free to run her own studio, the only woman to build and operate a movie studio, the largest pre-Hollywood studio in the United States.  She was known for placing a large sign in her studio that read “Be Natural,” solid advice to her actors at a time when the industry favored artificial poses.  Perhaps most astonishing, she placed men in women’s roles and women in men’s, basically having them exchanging places in THE CONSEQUENCES OF FEMINISM (1906), 53 The Consequences of Feminism 1906 - YouTube (6:57), which caught the eye of Russian film icon Sergei Eisenstein, who listed her in his memoirs (Hitchcock as well), where her influence is even more pronounced when showing her screen images and his side by side, as they are nearly identical.  Guy-Blaché distinguished herself by making films about parenthood, religion, feminism, immigration, labor conflict, and anti-Semitism, and was one of the first directors to employ an all-black cast, which came about as the white actors involved refused to work with blacks, which she viewed as a peculiarly American trait.  The inventor Thomas Edison introduced her to another, a capitalist monopoly, compiling so many patents over the technologies needed to create movies, eventually forming the Motion Picture Patent Company with a consortium of stockholders, including Eastman Kodak, establishing an Edison Trust that agrees to sell stock only to other stockholders, preventing unauthorized use of cameras, film stock, and projectors, basically shutting down film production, not to mention exhibition and distribution rights, unless they became stockholders, taking a giant cut out of their business interests and hiring mob-affiliated thugs to enforce the patents.  This single act drove the movie industry west to Hollywood, and may also have sabotaged her marriage, leading to a divorce, as her husband ran off to Hollywood with one of the studio’s leading actresses, Lois Weber, who quickly became more renowned than Guy-Blaché, with movie archivist and author Anthony Slide describing Weber as “certainly the most important female director the American film industry has known.” (Lois Weber Film Collection)  WWI profoundly affected the film industry, much of it due to an emergency need for the highly flammable nitrate in the nitrate film base for the munitions industry, all but destroying accumulated reserves of film stock, as it was deemed non-essential.  A fire eventually destroyed the Solax studios and Guy-Blaché’s career was over by 1919.

Returning to France in the 1920’s, Gaumont refused to re-hire her, allowing her reputation to be tarnished and forgotten, until Gaumont himself wanted to write the history of his legendary film company, turning to her for her recollections, as she was there with him at the beginning, but when he published the book, her contributions were omitted, which simply stunned her, as those omissions became the official historical record, making her case that much harder to prove, as she had no films in her possession.  Part of the beauty of the film is the persistence to unravel the truth, using investigative methods of a detective to track down relatives, family photos, letters, diary entries, and Guy-Blaché’s missing films, where the 150 or so that still exist are spread throughout the collections of 60 different film archives around the world.  While the story itself is eye-opening, perhaps the heart and soul of the film is captured in delightfully personal interviews with Guy-Blaché herself, believed to be from 1964, as she passed away in 1968, but they are utterly authentic and revealing, where she couldn’t be more charming while making her case that her place in film history had literally been stolen from her, with historians erroneously listing various men as the director of her films, based on hearsay and scant evidence, while she meticulously compiled a list to set the record straight, lecturing at universities and correcting historian errors, writing her own memoirs in the 1950’s, Autobiographie d’une pionnière du cinéma (with an English translation released in 1976), so by 1955 she was recognized with the Légion d’honneur, France’s highest nonmilitary honor.  In 2009, the Whitney Museum of American Art programmed 80 of her films (Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer | Whitney Museum of American Art), while in 2011 the Directors Guild of America awarded Guy-Blaché with a Lifetime Achievement Award ("2011 DGA Honors Recipients Announced").  Several books have been written about her, including Alice Guy Blaché: Lost Visionary of the Cinema, by Alison McMahan, 2002, and Alice Guy-Blaché: Cinema Pioneer, edited by Joan Simons, Curator-At-Large for the Whitney Museum of American Art, 2009, and more than 60 of her French films were released on DVD in 2009, Gaumont Treasures (1897-1913) - Kino Lorber Theatrical, so certainly many others are equally well deserving of mention in rediscovering her legacy. 

Nine years in the making, this film became the personal obsession of a single filmmaker, basically resurrecting from the ashes one of the most prominent pioneers of cinema itself. Certainly one of the most astonishing aspects is just how completely eradicated she had been for over 100 years, where we will never see the faces of those responsible, though Léon Gaumont may be the most prominent figure in diminishing her influence within his own company, no small oversight, as well as her husband Herbert Blaché who for decades took credit for the films she made at Solax Studio.  What’s perhaps most surprising is the French dismissal of her influence, unwilling to hire her upon her return to France or give her credit for the films she made, instead inventing the big lie that some 1000 films were made by somebody else, anyone, as it couldn’t possibly have been a woman.  It really wasn’t until the digital age when celluloid could be transferred to a digital film that her films are finally coming to light, as it took technology that didn’t exist in her era to produce copies of films otherwise languishing in anonymity.  In one of the more amusing scenes, they actually have to bake the old film before it can be transferred digitally.  While she has gained stature, there are some that continue to insist she was just a secretary, a minor player in a burgeoning industry, unwilling to offer her the credit she deserves, using the erasure of history as their proof.  Her career resembles a convict convicted of a crime they never committed, released thirty or forty years afterwards, with some still insisting upon their crime, unwilling to acknowledge the initial mistakes made, as everything that came afterwards was predicated on a lie.  History is filled with lies waiting for someone to disprove them, like a great mathematical problem that hasn’t been solved, where one day someone will come along and solve the problem.  This film may not entirely do the job, as the director (who does graphics for Hollywood movies) seems intent on catering to the youth market and making it entertaining, using snappy visual effects or flashy animation, where scholarship and due diligence awaits the future of Alice Guy-Blaché, whose reputation has been elevated, but still remains something of an enigma, an unsolved puzzle that needs to be unraveled before Guy-Blaché’s name appears side by side with Georges Méliès and the Lumière Brothers.  Some may believe she’s there now, but male-dominated history books still omit her name or minimize her influence, which may be the most sexist revelation of the film, as there are likely so many other women out there as yet undiscovered.