Early Life & Artistic Influences
Dulac was born in 1882 in Amiens, France, where her difficult childhood ultimately helped to shape the views that she would later carry out as an adult. With her younger sister’s death and her mother’s depression, Dulac’s home life in Amiens was unstable, resulting in her spending a large amount of time with her upper-bourgeois grandmother in Paris. Furthermore, her father was often absent, a result of his work as a brigadier general, and was stationed away from home. Dulac’s progressive ideas would quickly diverge from her early environment in Amiens as she became interested in feminist and socialist politics in Paris, thanks to her grandmother. [6]
An early exposure to the arts would continue to influence Dulac’s own artistic career. She held a deep respect for medieval religious works and their use of light to reinforce divinity. On the other end of chronology, paintings like the ones produced by Picasso during his blue period would also influence her use of monochromatic tones in films like The Smiling Madame Beudet. Furthermore, her interest in photography would jumpstart her film career, especially since she was at the right age to catch these advancements in technology, as she was 12 when the Lumiere Brothers held their first exhibition. Perhaps most importantly to Dulac, she had a passion for music, which would later turn into the concept of cinema as “music for the eyes.” The emphasis on this musical theme is clearly reflected in Madame Beudet’s use of the piano as respite from her husband. [6]
Politics
Between 1901 and 1906, Dulac worked in feminist journalism, which would impact her future politics and filmmaking. It was particularly important to Dulac to help the poor, working class, and women in her work, which was further intensified by her marriage to Albert Dulac, who held tolerance and social equality as personal priorities. However, her marriage to Albert, while beneficial for her political senses, was characterized by coolness and mutual respect. Moreover, Dulac’s conservative religious education sharply contrasted with her gender politics and strong belief of gender as a social construction. From 1906 to 1913, Dulac became involved in the association and journal La Française, where she worked as an activist, journalist, and theater critic. The political views of Germaine Dulac, especially with regards to feminism, are illustrated in The Smiling Madame Beudet through Madame Beudet’s independence. [6]
Professional Life
As is the case with all individuals worthy of regard and reflection, Germaine Dulac’s early professional life had a profound effect on her later pursuit of experimental motion and form in cinema. Witnessing dancer Loïe Fuller perform at a very young age assisted in provoking the revolutionary view of cinema that Dulac would continue to elucidate and define as she grew older. As an experimental female filmmaker, Dulac’s work is necessarily in conversation with the patriarchal milieu of her era. Her oeuvre frequently takes issue with the chauvinist avant-garde aesthetic doctrines specific to that time period – by apposing narrativity and non-narrativity, as well as offering her audience apperception alongside critical separation. [2]
First a student of music – then a journalist and a film theorist – this rather eccentric woman was an exemplary feminist figure even before she directed her first film in 1916. The historical disregard, and subsequent rediscovery, of Dulac’s contribution to the cinematic canon is concomitant with her gender. Therefore – in any discussion of the director – her role as a young radical feminist in the filmmaking culture of 1920’s France should be duly noted. [4]
A First Hand Account: What Did Dulac’s Contemporaries Think?
An American newspaper article from 1920 describes Dulac as “a woman who boldly throws over the routine of a fashionable Parisienne’s life…to give herself over to serious commercial work with all the responsibilities it entails.” In her own time, Dulac was indeed recognized as an important filmmaker, and her unique place as a woman in film was not overlooked. However, the article goes on to state, “At first the fact of a woman entering the ranks made the other members smile; but now competition is keen, and the lady director is quietly and surely pushing the men into the background.” The sexism of the 1920s is clear in this quotation, though the attitude towards the “lady director” changed as her work came to the forefront of French filmmaking. [3]
Catie DeWitt and Anne Rainey