One of the cinema's earliest melodramas, ‘A House Divided’ is also full of humour. It tells the brief tale of marital strife in which mutual suspicion comes between a woman and her husband – a man who in the usual course of day to day life is dependent on her, her mother, a maid and a witty gum-chewing secretary. A whiff of perfume and a pair of gloves are enough to raise the conjugal barriers until communication is reduced to a series of angry notes (a nice use of intertitles here). As she refuses to speak to him, he goes to pieces. Finally though, suspected infidelities are revealed as mere misunderstandings, the marriage contract is re-established, romantic love can re-assert itself, and the divided house can be re-united with a laugh and a kiss. For Alice Guy rationality overcomes doubt; the yawning chasms of prejudice and oppression determining a woman's position within marriage – so accurately portrayed by Germaine Dulac in ‘The Smiling Madame Beudet’ ten years later – were not yet part of her pragmatic optimism and trust in “equality”. 

To Alice Guy it was obvious that: '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.' (Alice Guy, 'A Woman's Place in Photoplay Production', The Moving Picture World, 1914) 

Alice Guy was not only the first woman film-maker but, in 1896, she made the first fiction film ‘La Fee aux Choux’ whilst still a secretary to Léon Gaumont in Paris. She became full-time director of Gaumont Productions, where she experimented with early sound techniques and supervised over 300 titles until her departure for America in 1907 and her marriage to Herbert Blaché. In Fort Lee, New Jersey she founded her own studio and production company, Solax, where she directed over 100 features and supervised many more. Solax was successful until 1914 when Blaché took over. With him in control outside producers were brought in and she was gradually forced out of the picture. By 1920 Alice Guy finally gave up going to production meetings because '...Herbert said I would have embarrassed the men who wanted to smoke their cigars and spit in peace while discussing business...' By 1922 Blaché had bankrupted them both and ten years after making ‘A House Divided’ she divorced him and returned to France where she earned a living writing stories and contributing to women's magazines. 

‘A House Divided’ was a Solax production and is one of half a dozen of Alice Guy's short films to have been preserved – none of her features have survived although they were undeniably popular at the time. Alice Guy died in 1968. Despite her very active contribution to the advancement of film, her name is rarely mentioned in the (male) “history of cinema”. 

Description source: Circles Catalogue (circa 1983). Compiled by Helen MacKintosh and Margaret Gillan. Edited by Felicity Sparrow.