One is a pioneer, the other a genius financier. Both have made history in cinema history. In this new episode of "At the heart of history", produced by Europe 1 Studio, Jean des Cars returns to the story of two rivals: Léon Gaumont and Charles Pathé.
This year, French cinema and the Cesar ceremony are stirred by controversy. But for a long time, this industry has lived turbulent times. Thus the birth of the cinematographic trade opposed, in France, two pioneers, Léon Gaumont and Charles Pathé. In this new episode of "At the Heart of History", produced by Europe 1 Studio, discover the history of this relentless rivalry.
On October 11, 1911, place de Clichy, in Paris, Léon Gaumont inaugurated his cinema, the Gaumont Palace. It is the largest cinema in the world! The hall was built on the site of the old racetrack. It is, indeed, gigantic: it can accommodate 3,400 spectators divided into a huge flowerbed and two circular galleries! The architect Auguste Bahrmann designed it in a Belle Époque style, that of the Universal Exhibition of 1900. The advertising announces evenings every day at 8:30 p.m. and mornings on Sundays and holidays at 2:30 p.m.
At each screening, an orchestra of thirty musicians and a choir accompany the screening. In winter, heating a room of such dimensions requires five tonnes of coal per day! A huge promenade has been planned for the public, which can be eaten thanks to regularly stocked buffets. Between the film screenings, there are very good music hall numbers. But who is this Léon Gaumont who offers Parisians a real temple of cinema?
Léon Gaumont: the brilliant inventions of a cinema madman
Léon Gaumont was born in 1864 in Paris to a rather modest family. Indeed, this student from Collège Sainte-Barbe is forced to leave school at 16 to earn a living. This will not prevent him from continuing his studies thanks to the evening classes. Her passion is photography. In 1881, at the age of 17, he joined Jules Carpentier's company of manufacturing precision mechanical electrical instruments. However, a few years later, Jules Carpentier worked alongside the Lumière brothers, the inventors of the cinematograph. Léon Gaumont was then only a clerical assistant. He is lively and intelligent. Very quickly, he was introduced to the business world.
In 1894, thanks to Carpentier, he was hired by the Richard Brothers' Comptoir Général de la Photographie. The following year, he took over the business that his owners were forced to sell. In August 1895, he created the company Louis Gaumont et Cie, the same year of the first public projection of cinema by the Lumière brothers.
Alice Guy, the world's first female film director
For Léon Gaumont, the beginnings were not easy. The devices marketed by the Richard brothers, such as the phonograph, were not really successful. However, passionate about the invention of Louis and Auguste Lumière, he developed, in 1896, a camera using 60mm perforated film. The following year, he invented a new 35mm model which became the standard format. He hired a remarkable secretary. Her name is Alice Guy. This 21-year-old girl, also from the middle class, forced to work, is passionate about dance, music, opera and painting. She proved to be an exceptional collaborator for Léon Gaumont.
This one, to convince the operators to buy his device rather than that of the competitors, decides, in 1896, to produce "animated views". These are short demonstration films. This is pure promotion, he does not plan to offer other kinds of films. But "Mademoiselle Alice", as she is called in society, convinces him to make real films. She intends to be the screenwriter and the director. Léon Gaumont accepts, provided that this does not impinge on his work as secretary.
When Georges Méliès began shooting his first films, Alice Guy directed "La fée aux choux". As decoration, she chose a painted canvas in front of which she placed cardboard sprouts. At 24, Alice Guy becomes the first female film director in the world. The success of "La fée aux choux" and the following films prompted Léon Gaumont to create a real cinematographic production department. Alice Guy takes the lead. She will be the only director with one or two exceptions.
Meanwhile, Léon Gaumont continues to innovate for the Seventh Art. At the 1900 Exhibition, he presented a device coupling image and sound. It was not yet fully developed. In 1902 he had arrived at a well-synchronized combination of the cinematographic image and the phonograph. With Alice Guy, he set up studios at Buttes Chaumont, in eastern Paris. In 1905, she produced an ambitious blockbuster with 300 extras: "La vie du Christ". The same year, she hired the man who made the fortune of Gaumont, Louis Feuillade. Let him tell us about their meeting: "Mademoiselle Guy was a very pleasant person, very intelligent and well understanding cinema as it was at that time. She only asked what my skills were in this art. I told her that they were very large and it was up to her to put me to the test. "
Feuillade will shoot more than 800 films in twenty years. The following year, Alice Guy organized a trip in the south to enjoy the light and beauty of Provence, like the American cinema which uses the California sun. With Feuillade, she discovers the emotional power of cinema. They want to reach the audience, not just make them laugh. Together, they will realize in Provence "Mireille" after Alphonse Daudet. It will be a huge success. They give acclaim to outdoor filming.
The birth of the film series
Louis Feuillade will invent the cinematographic soap opera. He keeps the crowds in suspense from week to week, episode by episode. From Fantômas to Vampires without forgetting Judex, it will fascinate the public. Alice takes advantage of the arrival of Louis Feuillade, who thrills fans of popular cinema, to devote herself to what fascinates her as much as Léon Gaumont, talking cinema. His first sound films are called "phono-scenes". The sound is recorded on rolls of wax.
In 1903, the first commercial screenings took place at the Musée Grévin theater and then at the Gymnase theater. It is an attraction that pleases many. Alice reserves the monopoly for the realization of all the scenes. If she appreciates the immense success of Feuillade, the main engine of the Gaumont, she feels the need to make more ambitious films. She stages "Notre-Dame de Paris" after Victor Hugo.
Four years later, she married Herbert Blaché, an operator of English origin, from the Gaumont agency in Berlin. Indeed, Gaumont continues to expand. The Blachés were then sent to the United States in June 1909 to promote the chronophone, another process of speaking cinema. Before leaving, Alice has Louis Feuillade appointed head of the studio. Léon Gaumont is concerned to have a network of rooms in his name to screen his own productions. The most prestigious is the Gaumont-Palace, inaugurated, I told you, in 1911. But for the past few years, Léon Gaumont has had a rival in cinema. His name is Charles Pathé.
Charles Pathé's innovations
Charles Pathé was born in Seine-et-Marne in 1863, a year before Léon Gaumont. Installed in Vincennes in 1870, his father was a pork butcher, his mother a cook. They are going through difficult days. Charles must work from the age of 12. He is a butcher boy. After five years of military service and a trip to Argentina, he opened a wine and restaurant business in 1891. Then he finds a job with a lawyer.
It was then that he became passionate about Edison's phonograph. He buys several devices in London, sells them at fairs. In 1895, he made significant profits. Charles Pathé is seduced by the cinema that has just been born. He wants to start animated projection on the big screen. In 1896, with his brother Emile, Charles founded the company Pathé Frères. For the first time, we will see on devices the Gallic rooster which is the symbol of Pathé. A rooster that will later sing, flapping its wings. A symbol of French cinema!
In 1898, thanks to financial contributions, the two brothers also embarked on the production of films. Two years later, they hire a collaborator, Fernand Zecca. He will become the director of the Pathé films. Zecca is making a news film about the visit to France of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia. Production increases but is not of high quality. We plagiarize Méliès and the English comedians. In 1903, Pathé produced 500 films and considerably increased its profits.
After industrializing the film, Pathé does the same for the production. On the banks of the Marne, at Joinville-le-Pont, he bought a plot of 2 ha. He built a laboratory and studios there. But above all, Charles Pathé hired representatives to open branches in England, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia and even one in the United States in 1904, one in Kiev and one in Calcutta in 1907. Pathé will have more twenty subsidiaries around the world.
Charles Pathé creates a real empire including production, distribution and exploitation. In 1908 alone he sold more than twice the films produced in the United States. Between 1908 and 1911, Pathé Frères' profits represented ten times the capital employed in 1908 ... The factories in Vincennes shoot 100,000 meters of film a day and employ 1,500 workers! If Léon Gaumont had Louis Feuillade as an emblem, Pathé, from 1910, contracted an exceptional star, Max Linder.
Let the historian Georges Sadoul explain to us who Max Linder is: "The character of Max, fixed in 1910, is a son of a family, impeccably dressed. When he is not courting the beautiful, he does the wedding, sometimes having a drink Max lives in beautiful apartments, is served by servants, attends salons and never works. His adventures, generally imposed by his beloved ones, recall the hardships that beautiful merciless ladies imposed on their serving knights, at the time of love lessons ... Everything is nice, charming, kind ".
Charles Pathé also created Pathé-Journal, a weekly news magazine projected around the world. A huge success. However, the rivalry with Gaumont is permanent.
Léon Gaumont strikes back
Indeed, for his part, Léon Gaumont is not unemployed. In 1910, he also launched a weekly cinematographic newspaper which presented the public the seven days of world history. He calls it Gaumont Actualités and has cameras ready to shoot in almost all countries of the world. It is a huge success.
The European sovereigns themselves were won over by this innovation: Nicolas II, a great cinema lover, had the reels delivered to him every week, with his family, at the Alexandre Palace, near Saint Petersburg. King Carol I of Romania set up a performance hall in his Peles castle, at the foot of the Carpathians. It has a projection booth. Each week, the Orient-Express delivers him the news coils. Dynastic Europe is informed. The start of globalization ...
At the same time, Léon Gaumont created the Gaumont Encyclopedia producing educational and scientific films. It makes 1,500 subjects available to the public. Gaumont agencies will be set up, such as those of Pathé, in New York, Vienna, Berlin, Moscow, Barcelona and Buenos Aires.
In 1911, the inauguration of the Gaumont Palace was a triumph. There is a film by Louis Feuillade La tare. The following year, Quo Vadis, which exceeds an hour of projection, which is exceptional, will become a cult film. Gaumont is also continuing his research on color. He invented chronochrome and presented it to the public in the hall of the Gaumont Theater, boulevard Poissonnière, in 1912. This process required the use of three selective objectives. On the screen, three superimposed monochrome images are projected. It is this overprint that recreates the color.
This technique is much more complicated than the photoelectric system which was invented by the Americans in 1936. But once again, Léon Gaumont is a pioneer.
In 1913, the Gaumont company bought 10,000 square meters of land in Nice. We are starting to build the studios of La Victorine there. We will shoot there a lot in winter to take advantage of the exceptional light while Paris disappears in the fog. Gaumont and Pathé were at the peak of their powers and their expansion when the First World War broke out.
Cinema victim of the war
When war broke out in 1914, Minister Alexandre Millerand created the Cinematographic Service of the Army. Léon Gaumont designates Edgar Costil as operator on the front. Feuillade was reformed in 1916 and the Maison Gaumont lived in slow motion during hostilities, putting its workshops at the service of National Defense. It is Gaumont who will carry out the big report, in colors, of the victory parade, in Paris, on the Champs-Elysées.
After the war, in 1925, Louis Feuillade died at the age of 52. Léon Gaumont then signs a distribution agreement with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and creates a company called Gaumont-Metro-Goldwyn. This adventure lasted until 1929. As talking cinema began to take hold, Léon Gaumont retired at the age of 67. His company merges with Franco-Film Aubert. Put into liquidation in 1938, it was reborn after the war under the name Société Nouvelle des Etablissements Gaumont. Withdrawn from Sainte-Maxime, Léon Gaumont died in 1946. He was buried in the Belleville cemetery, not far from the Buttes-Chaumont which saw the birth of his empire 51 years earlier.
As for Charles Pathé, the war will also strike him a hard blow. The factories emptied of their workers are requisitioned for armaments. Charles Pathé then signs an agreement with the American magnate of the press, Hearst for the "Pathé News", the American version of the Pathé Journal. The armistice signed, he founded Pathé Cinéma in order to adapt to new times. But it no longer produces. His company is reserved for distribution, rental and operation. In 1926, Kodak bought the film manufacturing factories in Vincennes. The company is called Kodak-Pathé. He sold his Pathé Cinéma shares to Bernard Nathan in 1929. He then retired from the business. He lives in Monaco and died in 1957, at the age of 93.
These two men have had exceptional successes. Their means were different. Léon Gaumont was a technician, a pioneer who anticipated talking and color cinema. Charles Pathé was a genius financier. French cinema owes them a lot. The productions, produced for both, have made history in cinema history and have enjoyed worldwide success. The first big page in the history of French cinema is theirs.
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"At the heart of history" is a Europe 1 Studio podcast
Author and presentation: Jean des Cars
Project manager: Adèle Ponticelli
Realization: Guillaume Vasseau
Diffusion and edition: Clémence Olivier
Graphics: Europe 1 Studio
Direction Europe 1 Studio: Claire Hazan